Seats

Two of the big considerations in this project are weight and safety. Less weight means the car is more efficient, so we tried to shave the weight as much as possible. One of the easiest ways to do this is to replace the heavy stock seats (with seat warmers and airbags) that weighed about 50 pounds each with low weight racing seats that are about half of the weight and weigh only 50 pounds for the pair. This also helps to improve the safety of the vehicle because we kept practically none of the stock safety features and even made the car more unsafe through body modifications.

With that being said, the new seats look unbelievably awesome and fit nicely. We went with the Corbeau A4 reclining seats and a four point harness system.


This is a view from the rear of the vehicle.


How can you argue that these seats don't look good?



This is how the vehicle looks so far...

Brakes and Pedals

When we were removing components from the car shortly after we got it, we took off the front and rear subframes and corresponding brake lines. Some of them got lost and we also cut a bunch when we were cutting the frame for the motor mounts. On top of that, the original brake rotors and pads were incredibly worn down and needed to be replaced. We just recently replaced pads and reran the brake lines and bled the brakes with new fluid. Now we can stop the car, which is always a good thing to be able to do.

On another note, we had to create our own pedal to integrate with the motor controller. We decided on a single degree of freedom design that allows the pedal to travel without hitting the brake all while properly engaging the throttle controller supplied with the motor.


The accelerator pedal is hinged at the bottom and moves a rod that is attached to the throttle controller on the left.


We also had to make it look interesting.

Generator

We just installed the generator this week. It is a standard generator that would be used on a job site by a contractor. It can produce 10kW continuously and is just perfect for our needs. When we were looking at generators every model we found above ~5kW seemed way too big for our space because the dimensions were always given with the frame included. To get an accurate measurement, we had to call the factory and have them measure the unit directly. Once we knew how big it was, we ordered it knowing we had about 2 inches of side to side play and we had to cut out the rear bumper area.


This shows the vertical and horizontal supports for the generator to sit on. We made the design modular to allow the generator to be removed without any specialized equipment.


Here it is! It fit almost too perfectly. If it was any bigger it would not fit.


We got it to fit without entering into the plastic bumper area.


One final view from above.

Drivetrain and half shafts

We finally got the custom half shafts in last week and just installed them. They look so beautiful. We needed to get them built for a couple of reasons: the amount of torque that is being transmitted is too large for the originals to handle and the originals no longer fit because they are too short and don't have the proper ends for the differential.


Here the new half shafts are connected. Now when we spin the wheels, the motor spins!!


The old half shafts (top) are really worn out and rusty. The new ones (below) look nice and fit perfectly.

Battery Box

One of the most critical components in any hybrid or electric vehicle is the batteries. We decided to use a total of 90 3.2 V 90 amp hour LiFePO4 batteries made by ThunderSky to power our vehicle. This should give us an all electric range greater than 60 miles.

The batteries take up a lot of space, almost as much as the original engine, transmission, and radiator. The only place we have to put all of these components is under the hood.

We created a battery box that will hold the batteries on two levels and allow for easy access to the lower level. The complete box just barely fits inside the space that was allotted so we had to modify the bumper slightly to make it fit by trimming some excess plastic from the inside of the bumper.


This photo shows the rough lower level before it got welded into the car.


Now the lower level is complete with half the batteries installed.


Now the top level is complete and ready for wiring.

Mounting the Motor Controller

Once we had the large beast (400 pound electric motor) in the vehicle, we needed to place the motor controller in the car. We decided on placing it behind the driver, where we had plenty of space.

Design and Manufacturing of the Support Bars

The team is getting ready for a long and hard-working session...


The steel bars were properly sized, cut, and welded to the frame of the vehicle.