Hi,
Caps… No I didnt make the adapter plate it was purchased through EVA. It was a unaversal adapter plate. I had a local machinist trim the edges and drill the holes for me. It is made of 1/2" aluminum. As for the motor mounts the saddle for the motor was part of the universal adapter kit and I used 1/4" x 3" angle iron to adapt that to my saddle. I have about 900 bucks into the adapter after its all said and done.
And thanks New Dawn for taking a look Ive read all of your conversion and was really impressed. Today I finally get to get back to work on it and hope to finish getting control board mounts done and start laying out the control board. Ill take some pics later and post them of today’s progress.
Hi,
Had a good day today. Got my components laid out on my control board. The board fits nicely so traced on my major components and removed to cut out for fan and heat sink on controller and to cut out places where my lugs will come through. I will hopefully get that done and paint the board this next week. Also will be painting rear box this weekend also. I have some 40mil poly material I will be coating the outside rear box with and then putting some aluminum edge band on all the edges. Not sure how that will look yet but hey I’m getting closer. I got a few pics of what I did today to show though.
This is awesome stuff. Could you please post links to where you bought your motor, controller, etc…? I’m very interested in following these steps, since this looks similar to the specs of my vehicle.
Hi Dave,
I got in contact with EVA and had them spec out what I needed for my criteria. They made the process very easy by spelling out my options. I didn’t know anything about doing this but I know I had to do something about my fuel bill and it seeps to be getting worse. I recently put in a pv system on my house to produce my own power so this seemed like the best fuel for me to use. So after a few months of research I decided to go with these guys because not only would they engineer out what I needed they sent me a pretty complete set of instructions on how to do it. For my first go around this seemed like the way to go. I think you could do it for a bit less money but the education was what I was after.
Other than that I used a local machinist to help me with finishing the adapter plate that they sent me. Ive done my own welding and minor fabricating. Im not an electrician or a mechanic but I have a shop and tools so off I went.
I tried to stay away from the EV-america site. I don’t mean to be snobby to them or anyone, but the site looks a little…bad. It’s hard to navigate and read anything. My main expertise is web design and computer repair, though. Maybe I can do some work on their site for them. I would love to contribute to the “alternative fuel revolution.”
Seems Ev-america is the most recommended site, as well as evalbum.com. EValbum has parts listings for each vehicle, and all I had to do was google from there.
Keep up the good work on posting pics. It looks great so far and it looks pretty straightforward.
Hi,
Thought I would make an update. I really thought this was gonna be a waste of a weekend but lo and behold my beloved wife let me stay home and finish up some work on our rental house. I got that done really quick and had rest of day to work on my project hehe. Well anyways got the battery boxes hooked up and the anderson disconnects up to the primary contacts. Charger hooked in there so got it fired up and charged my batteries. Before I started charging I read 150v even on 24 6v batteries. About an hour after the charger was finished I got 155.6v at contactors. I will check it tomorrow morning before I go to work and see what actual pack voltage is.
Charger went through three stages of charge and then the light turned green and said CC for charge complete. It took approx 4 hrs. worked great!!
As you can see I also got my pot box hooked up sat inside the cab and stepped on pedal worked great so I was very pleased with the progress. I hope I can beat the $4.50/gal. at the pump lol.
Looks great! Is it ready to drive yet? you have to let us know as soon as possibly
Don’t get in a wreck, or else you’ll have to call a hazmat team to clean up the battery mess. What’s the laws/regulations for putting batteries in the front like that?
I dont think there are any laws against it. I look at if I get in a head on wreck in small truck that 360lbs of lead will be an equalizer lol.
It is a ways from driving yet I still have to do the rest of the wiring, put the dc to dc converter in and then do the work on the cab yet so its a ways but it is getting closer.
I like the way you left in the clutch to absorb the initial start up
great Idea. did you dimplr the motor shaft before locking down the set screw? I assume you used lots of loctite? Also how did you key the shaft that slides onto the motor for the key??? did the machine shop do that for you or did you not slot it ang just use set screws as your key???
On the other side of what was left of the clutch disk was a motor coupler that is keyed with a set screw to make the marriage to the motor. All the bolts inside the bellhousing I used loctite on. The adapter kit came with all the parts shown all I did was assemble them. My machinist just trimed the edge of the adapter plate and drilled the holes to attach to bell housing.
I completely charged my battery pack. I waited to the next morning to test the pack and I was getting 152.6 volts pack wide. My individual batteries ranged from 6.35v to 6.38v. I assume that is pack voltage fully charged. My question is what voltage will the average 6v battery show when in need of a charge or at around 80% DOD. Is it around 6.0v or is it less.
Stephen,
I’m not sure on the tranny. It is a stock 5 speed that was in the truck that had a 2.0 liter 4 cyl. I went back through my pics and I have a few with the label on it.
I would like to commend your efforts.
I worked for a municipality that had several RAV 4’s, electrified by Toyota. It was a test. The shop preferred driving them to driving a gas job. They would out accelerate the shop truck, Ranger w/V8, and we never actually made it to top speed. Someplace over 80. They had a range of 90 miles. We performed service in a metropolitan area and never had a problem, even w several trips across town. They also had AC, a necessity in California. My question is: Everyone splits up the battery’s, front and back. Is there a reason for this, or are you just conserving cargo bed space. Do you have any pictures of the motor mounts?
To add weight to front end to bring it back close to original
To save a little cargo space in back. If this truck works good for my purpose I plan on hinging the bed and getting as many as I can in between the frame at a later date.
[QUOTE=ragee;3326]Stephen,
I’m not sure on the tranny. It is a stock 5 speed that was in the truck that had a 2.0 liter 4 cyl. I went back through my pics and I have a few with the label on it.
Hi,
Thought I would update. I’m almost there. About another 8 to 10 hrs to my estimate and I’ll be doing my first test drive. Very anxious for this. Here is a pic with most of wiring in. Ive just got the inertia switch, fuse block, and guages left to do. Coarse I’ve got to put the liners in bat boxes and put shocks all way around and paint it yet but gonna do some testing on it first.
Woo Hoo!!! I will get some better pics and post them later this week.
I’d love to know how much $$$ you have in it at this point. I plan on doing the same conversion and going through EV-America. I’m anxious to get started.
