This post is about building the motor frame.  We worked on this from about June through August of 2010.

Top part of frame fitted onto motor adapter plate

I have been unhappy with the way I have been embedding the videos so far.  Usually with just a link, or link from a still that I made from the video.  The videos were mp4/h264 which for most people meant they had to use quicktime to view.  I really wanted to get to a point where people could view the video in their browser without a plugin.  I thought maybe with html5 we were getting to a point where this would work.  Actually it does work great in Safari and Chrome.  Both of these browsers understand the video element and will decode h264 encoded video.  Firefox understand the video element as well but will only decode ogg format and not h264.

This site has been stale for a few months, but that doesn't mean that nothing has been happening. In fact we have made quite a bit of progress.  In this post I'll cover the fabrication of the adapter plate that goes between the motor and transmission.

Despite the date of this post, the work described here took place in April and May 2010.

I ordered batteries, a battery management system, and a charger from EV Components back in February.  EV Components has now gone out of business without delivering prepaid order to a number of customers.  At this point I don't know what equipment or money, if any, I will recover.

I can't …

During April and May we worked on the motor-to-transmission coupler and the motor-to-transmission adapter plate. In this post I'll show how we made the coupler and cover the adapter plate in a separate post. Here is a photo of the mostly finished coupler. It has a balancing weight taped on which will later be welded.

Mostly finished motor shaft coupler

Keep reading to see how we made this coupler ... more ...

Edited on 6-13-2010:

I originally posted the links below to various threads on diy electric.  The posts themselves tell the story and needed no further comment from me.  However, it appears that these posts have now been taken down, likely for litigation reasons.

So I will summarize.  These are the facts as far as I know. more ...

A few weeks ago we spent Easter weekend removing the truck engine.  We started on Friday and worked till mid-afternoon, and then worked some more on Saturday.  The following weekend I sold the engine where it will go into another pickup similar to mine.  I am happy that it can be recycled that way.

Engine removed from truck

In the rest of this post I'll tell you about the engine removal process, but there is nothing special about it.  Nothing blew up or caught fire so don't get your hopes up.  At the end I have two videos, one of which is a time lapse which is kind of fun to watch. more ...

We burned up the motor controller.  And it was AWESOME.  If you read all the way to the end I promise you a video with some smoke (just a little smoke).

Burned up controller and electronics

Wow.  It seems like a lot of things are happening in a short amount of time.  We pulled the engine from the truck and I sold it (post about it coming soon).  We have the materials in hand to make the motor adaptor plate and coupler.  I bought a brake …

ANOTHER LONG POST: This post describes 3 weeks of testing that was done with the newly built controller power board.  This is the power board that I wrote about in this post.  We are planning to use this (or at least try it) in the truck if all our testing works out.  For the controller logic board, I am using the Stellaris microcontroller evaluation board for the brains, a partially built DIY controller (see this post) for the analog circuitry, and a plug board for a half-bridge low-side/high-side driver.  So even though the power board is looking good, this whole system is still very much a prototype.  I am working on a circuit design and board layout for the logic part of the controller, but it will be a while before that is finished.

Testing of the power board was done in 3 steps:

• tested on a bench with a bench supply and limited current
• tested on the Kart with the battery pack but with no load on the Kart
• tested using the new controller power board to drive the Kart

Bench testing the new power board with ADC motor