Electric DeLorean

[Ryan S.]

Car projects take forever...

That's what's been going on; it's not dead, just crawling along. These sorts of things take a lot of time sometimes.
Well, I've been waiting for more than 2.5 years, I can wait a little longer. It's gonna be an awesome car when it's finished!

Any updates?

[Mario]

Not much. We've got the Tesla motor and it looks like it should fit, though modifications to the frame might be necessary.

The holdup at the moment is waiting on the custom control PCB for it. People have controlled Tesla motors before, but by spoofing the CAN bus signals, which isn't ideal. We're using a PCB that replaces all the brains so we can drive it directly. It's been taking some time, though.

[knightjp]

What is the update with this project?

[Nicholas R]

Good lord, I had forgotten all about this project. Is it still in process? I think we're past 3.5 years now. Hope to get an update that it's still moving. It was an ambitious project but will be a shame if it's cancelled.

[Mario]

Oh man, I didn't realize it'd been so long since I've even logged in to the forums. This is the first time I saw those messages!

So the good news, straight off the bat, is that the project isn't cancelled and it's still coming along.

After this post:
http://dmctalk.org/showthread.php?11...l=1#post208810
The control board was finally eventually finished and the motor works. Bad news is that it doesn't fit, so a portion of the rear frame needed to be cut out and remade from scratch to fit the motor. We found a really good fabricator to do this, and we just had to wait a while for him to finish up some other customer projects and he would do my car. Before we got to that point though, he ended up getting a divorce and so had to drop his work for a while. That gets all wrapped up but now he has to move shops. He was supposed to contact us after that was done but a couple months go by and we just can't get ahold of him.

So that plan was out. By this time, the smaller Tesla drive units had also had a control board developed for them. These put out about 330HP and are small enough to fit in the back with no frame modifications. So as of about a month ago, the plan is to go with one of those units. EV West is finishing up their current project then will start on mine.

I'm slightly bummed to "settle" for "only" 330HP instead of the originally-planned 420HP, but to be honest, 330 will be more than enough for me and I know I'll enjoy it very much.

At this point I've sort of just put it away in the back of my mind with a "it'll be done when it's done" attitude, heh. Which is why I totally forgot about this forum as well.
In the meantime, 2 years ago I picked up a very nice (gas-powered) DeLorean from a fellow in NorCal, planning to sell it once the electric one is finished. It's been a pleasure to drive, and after fixing a loose coolant hose, bad rad cap, and bad otterstat, has given me zero issues whatsoever. So at least I have that!

Watch this space in the coming months, there may be news before too long.

[mr_maxime]

I was looking at a tesla motor for my swap but decided against it due to the cost. Nice to know it wouldnt have fit anyways.

Any idea what they are doing for hvac, vacuum pump? What about parking? Will you just have the ebrake?

[DrJeff]

Check out the Audi Tesla (search YouTube for Audi Tesla). That conversion split the large Tesla drive unit into its three components, motor, reduction gear/differential, and inverter. The gears are discarded, but the motor and inverter are kept. The motor - with some interface plate machining - is fitted to the stock gear box. The inverter sits to the side only connected to the motor via high voltage cabling, coolant lines, and low voltage motor position detection lines.

The large drive unit was never going to fit as packaged without removing the back V-frame and engine cradle of the DeLorean. Creating a new rear frame section is not just a fabrication challenge it is a significant engineering challenge. EVWest would have known all this (the non-fit of the Tesla large drive unit and the complexity of re-engineering the rear frame) from the beginning and need to get real with you.

Jeff

[Mario]

I was looking at a tesla motor for my swap but decided against it due to the cost. Nice to know it wouldnt have fit anyways.

Any idea what they are doing for hvac, vacuum pump? What about parking? Will you just have the ebrake?

Probably just keeping the stock ebrake. Maybe we'll add something more, I never found that brake to be super great.
For A/C we're looking at a standalone electric A/C compressor module, and similar for the vacuum pump.

Check out the Audi Tesla (search YouTube for Audi Tesla). That conversion split the large Tesla drive unit into its three components, motor, reduction gear/differential, and inverter. The gears are discarded, but the motor and inverter are kept. The motor - with some interface plate machining - is fitted to the stock gear box. The inverter sits to the side only connected to the motor via high voltage cabling, coolant lines, and low voltage motor position detection lines.

The large drive unit was never going to fit as packaged without removing the back V-frame and engine cradle of the DeLorean. Creating a new rear frame section is not just a fabrication challenge it is a significant engineering challenge. EVWest would have known all this (the non-fit of the Tesla large drive unit and the complexity of re-engineering the rear frame) from the beginning and need to get real with you.

Jeff

Yeah, I've seen people doing that recently, taking apart the motor. It's a good idea! I don't know if we'll do it, though. I always felt 420HP would be a bit much for me to handle, anyway.

And yes, we are well aware that redoing part of the frame is an involved task. The person we were going to have do it has experience in doing that very sort of thing, which is why we didn't just move to another fabricator when we couldn't contact him anymore (because we couldn't find others with that kind of experience).

[DMC5180]

Probably just keeping the stock ebrake. Maybe we'll add something more, I never found that brake to be super great.
For A/C we're looking at a standalone electric A/C compressor module, and similar for the vacuum pump.



Yeah, I've seen people doing that recently, taking apart the motor. It's a good idea! I don't know if we'll do it, though. I always felt 420HP would be a bit much for me to handle, anyway.

And yes, we are well aware that redoing part of the frame is an involved task. The person we were going to have do it has experience in doing that very sort of thing, which is why we didn't just move to another fabricator when we couldn't contact him anymore (because we couldn't find others with that kind of experience).

Apparently someone else has ambitions of taking on a EV conversion using a model 3 Drivetrain.

https://youtu.be/omXq-6LbV6M

[mr_maxime]

Apparently someone else has ambitions of taking on a EV conversion using a model 3 Drivetrain.

https://youtu.be/omXq-6LbV6M

My neighbor told me about Rich Rebuilds when he saw me working on my car. Never seen any of his videos til now