This blog documents the restoration, and conversion, of a 1965 Humber (Singer) Vogue to a fully electric vehicle. The Vogue will be powered by an 11kW(modified), 3 phase industrial AC motor, controlled by an industry standard Variable Speed Drive (VSD) or Inverter. To be able to produce the 400 volts phase to phase the VSD will need about 600 VDC of batteries. A big thanks to the contributors on the AEVA forum: http://forums.aeva.asn.au/forums/

Thursday, May 20, 2010

More Motor Positioning/Jiggling

With the motor mounting frame under-way I though I'd better try to figure out if I am going to remove the terminal box or stick with it.
I removed the carpet and sound proofing from the transmission "hump" inside the car and removed two of the three access covers. The cardboard motor - now complete with terminal box would not fit it where is has to go. I reversed it so as to get rid of the terminal box and here are some pics of the fit.
The motor here is about 20mm lower than the measurements from which motor frame is being made.

View from the engine bay. The motor is in backwards so the terminal box (brown) should be on the other end.
 
Inside the car - view from the drivers side.

Inside the car from above the transmission hump. You can see here that the hump is not symmetrical. They give the driver a bit more room. I may take a rubber mallet to the right hand side of the hump to make a little more room(from under the car).

This pic just gives an idea of how far back I want the motor. The old gearbox extension housing would have started about where the rear of this motor is now so weight wise I will have more weight toward the rear of the car. You can see that the terminal box really will not fit - it would be about 15mm too high. The rear part of the terminal box would be about halfway through the solid metal between the 2 access holes (60mm from the rear of the motor).

View from under the car. It would be OK at this height but to centre the motor shaft where the old transmission output shaft would have been it should go up another 20mm. At this height the motor is about 20mm above the two lengthwise chassis rails so the motor shouldn't get damaged by speed humps etc.

 My feeling at this stage is to remove the terminal box and replace it with a flat 3mm plate with the motor wires (6 of them) coming through a grommet and air terminated to the 3 motor cables. Heatshrink each of the terminations. Then fudge up a plastic cover from an ABS plastic box and secure that over the wires. The whole lot has to be less than 20mm high at the rear-end of the terminal box and can be 30 to 40mm high at its most-forward point.

1 comment:

Sparky Brother said...

Johnny, I am pretty convinced that upper part of the gear box could be cut off and replaced with a custom fabricated cover welded on or steel riveted if you like that will get you rid of the hassle of reversing the motor. I my self will be forced to reverse my motor end caps for a different reason and I guarantee it will be a hell of a trouble.

Cheers
Sparky Brother