Easing back into it

I had grand plans to spend a lot of time over the summer working on the car. Lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer, right?  Ha. Not this year. Between yard work, home improvement projects, vacations, and a slightly increased workload at my job, I was hard-pressed to fit in much garage time. Plus, the kit components weren't exactly screaming through the door. So, here I am at the beginning of the school year and basically at the same place in my conversion as last May. No use looking back at lost time - just get to work!

Here's the status on the car:
-Cradle (sub-frame which supports the front suspension and engine components) has been cleaned up and re-painted.
-Interior has been gutted (in preparation for battery rack installation).
-Transmission and clutch parts have been de-greased.
-Power steering rack has been replaced with a manual rack.

Status of the EV components:
-Received all components for the kit except the DC-DC converter.
-Have completed preliminary battery rack designs for the back seat and trunk area.

Immediate task at hand:
Assemble the motor-adapter-transmission and install it in the engine compartment (so I can complete the layout of the engine compartment and figure out how many batteries I can really fit in there). I couldn't get the alignment dowels out of the ICE so I'm having a couple of aluminum pins made which will be pressed into the adapter. I should get those tomorrow, after which I'll be able to complete the assembly.

There's been quite a bit of discussion amongst my car consultants at work about whether to mount the motor-transmission with or without rubber. I could use the existing rubber mounts, but I'm not sure it's necessary. There should be little or no vibration with the new electric motor, so why not just mount everything rigid? At the moment the plan is to mount everything solid to the frame and see what happens. Maybe I'll do a little on-line search to see what others have done.

I'll start updating this blog more frequently now, and hopefully remember to bring the camera along so I can put pictures in, too.