Welcome back! Much time has passed since last update, much work also. Let us begin… When the custom shaft was finished, all parts were ready to mount the motor on the original gearbox. The hollow rotor inside of the electric motor needs to be filled with oil to lubricate the toothing to the adapter shaft when in operation.

When the motor and the gear were hooked together it was interesting to see the difference in weight compared to the gasoline motor. Before the conversion the motor weighed 120kg and the gear 60kg. Now the combined weight is only around 100 kilograms. The electric motor is 50kg, hence the gear weight was also reduced by 10kg when the unnecessary gears were taken out!

Right after I put the drive train under the car to see how much empty room remains around the motor in the rear end of the bus. We still need to place 36 battery cells in a third box in the back to get to the targeted capacity of 50kWh. The challenge will be to construct a box with as many cells as possible and still remain serviceable and mountable with not too much effort.

With cardboard I built a mockup of a possible box shape. The empty space looks big but the dimensions of the cells do not leave many degrees of freedom. With the shown box I am able to put 35 cells and the neccessary space for battery management system and contactors inside it. That is one cell to little, but hey, that results in 2.5km range difference, should be okay. I did not find a better solution.

Another thing that needs to be built now is the suspension of the motor and the battery box onto the chassis. We will use the original support of the motor. There we will ‘just’ need to design a rubber bearing for the motor and a fixed support for the battery box. Nothing easier than this… Update follows.