E-Lorean Electric Conversion

[Ron]

T..."Running the motor in full reverse at full power"...

I'd like to be there when you back, back into the future!

[SupercoolBill]

Cool write up. Condition of your car seems very similar to mine (see me restoration thread)
My blasting cabinet bites me pretty good too but only when I hold parts in midair while blasting. As long as I make sure they are touching the cabinet no lightening strikes. I've had it jump to my nose before...it hurts.

Sent from my SM-F926U1 using Tapatalk

[Ron]

Cool write up. Condition of your car seems very similar to mine (see me restoration thread)
My blasting cabinet bites me pretty good too but only when I hold parts in midair while blasting. As long as I make sure they are touching the cabinet no lightening strikes. I've had it jump to my nose before...it hurts.

Sent from my SM-F926U1 using Tapatalk

Ground the nozzle...

[bitMuse]

Can confirm grounding the nozzle when I did my upgrade did fix the shocking problem. Also I grounded the whole box (it was not grounded.)

Pretty big status update so far. We've recorded the first part of the youtube video regarding re-engineering the tesla motor. As well as some juicy timelapses and glimpses into the motor itself. I've added a special picture at the end of the stream of today's photos ...



Thanks to Mike's help at Delorean Midwest (and his encouragement) I was able to disassemble my brake calipers. They were all this bad and badly seized. I was on the verge of giving up, even at one point having welded a bolt to the piston in order to try and get it out. For anyone struggling like me, Mike's advice to "wiggle it back and forth by prying it up and then smashing it back down" was the piece I was missing.

This community is awesome, especially Delorean Industries, Delorean Midwest, and Delorean Texas for answering all my inane questions.

Emery cloth and steel wool was not sufficient to remove the grime from these pistons, so I had to use a wire wheel and brake clean. That finally got them clean. Another picture of the carnage left behind:



Following that was a couple shop days. We got all the bushings pressed out. The split washers out of the hub carrier. Then disaster struck.



The aluminum hub carrier snapped and a piece broke off. We're trying to TIG weld it back on and salvage that carrier, but it's tough. This was totally my bad and was the only casualty, but it sucks none-the-less.

Following that we were able to remove the doors, I spent half a day cleaning the interior (prepping to powerwash and ionize it to kill any must, mold, or germs).



















[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/7RfTBUT.png[IMG]

When I took off the roof access panel, there was quite a bit of pollution up there. May be past its prime, but not sure yet.



Using plenty of anti-seize and torque spec +5% I assembled the front end suspension. Josh at Delorean Industries sent me the instructions again (because I lost them. Oops.) But I did have all the parts which is the important part. It looks SO GOOD coming back together.





I also took the opportunity to take more shots of the stripped down exterior...











And finally the image you've all been waiting for .. The image that makes going backwards possible, Marty. Made from CAD and imported into the real world as a prototype PLA part while I check fitment... The reverse polarizer.



More deets to come soon. I just started a new job next week so I may be a bit slow going forward. But this project is still going alive and well.

[bitMuse]

I am long overdue for an update. Sorry guys! As aforementioned I got a job, and then .. my daily's engine exploded when I threw a crankshaft bearing so I was out of commish for even longer. Unable to catch a break, I now am moving across the entire country which means I need to get this thing together and FAST.



So after we slapdashed some wheels onto the frame and wheeled it outside we gave the car a nice simple green bath and powerwashing to remove the remaining cruft and began reassembly.

Priorities became in order:

1. Prep the body
2. Get Wheels On
3. Add Parking Brake
4. Mount Engine
5. Mount Body

While waiting for some parts to arrive and while my buddy was reassembling the rear suspension I took the time to clean up some of the mounting holes and hardware from the body of the car.


First came the mounting brackets for the heat shield of the engine bay. I'm not convinced I need that anymore when I have a water-cooled electric motor so I drilled out the rivets and tossed them.


Unsurprisingly the 26 rivnuts by the kick panels on the sides were just trashed. Every single one of them seized and rusted or spinning in the frame. I took the easy way out and cut them all off with an angle grinder, die ground them down, and punched them into the body. They'll be replaced soon with stainless steel or aluminum rivnuts to never become a problem again hopefully.


The supposedly aluminum flanges for the seat pass-thru bolts were corroded and the metal that used to be my parking brake was effectively gone.


I made an attempt to clean up the flanges for the seats but two of them were so corroded they literally split in half and fell out of the car. So I designed new flanges and have had them sent off to a fabricator to be made out of 316 stainless.


Here's that DXF if anyone ever needs to fabricate one.

The old bolts for the parking brake were cut loose and the metal removed.


Thanks to everyone at DMC Midwest they sent me a spare parking brake caliper which I generously took pictures of the inside of before wirewheeling and cleaning up all the corroded parts.


Not all of the parts were readily available to rebuild the parking brake assembly. Some of them like this spring bolt needed to be fabricated from what was on hand and I did my best with an angle grinder and hand drill.


The parking brake is pretty terrible on the Delorean. Overcomplicated and confusing, but I managed to cobble two pairs together from the 2.5 pairs' worth of parts I had laying around. One day I will have to unify the paint and detailing of all these parts but that day is not today.

However before the parking brake can be mounted the trailing arm has to be tightened to spec and that presented a problem. The Delorean Industries trailing arm doesn't perfectly fit with the carrier hubs I have. The bolt length is closer to 120 or 130mm rather than the stock 110mm, and as such, there's also a small gap between the hub and the arm...



So some fabrication work needed to be done. I stick welded two washers together, ground them down a little, and whacked them into place on both sides. I couldn't find ANYWHERE where I could get the right bolt size for a 10.9, and definitely not for a 1.5 pitch. I did however find a partially threaded 150mm bolt 10.9 with fine threads at a local fastener specialist...

So I cut all four of them short using an angle grinder and bolted everything up to spec.



With that I was able to more or less get the parking brake mounted sans rear caliper pads.

Since the last update we also added the control arms for the rear and .. surprise! The wheel pitch is correct and it did fit together with my lower crossbeam. Which is a relief. .... Because I never test fitted anything and never double checked my angles.



Now with the rear suspension and parking brakes more or less ready we finishing reassembling the motor and brought it over to the forklift. With some fancy lifting work we brought it over to the body and ...



Mounted it! With the wheels now firmly attached to the body we could let the car sit on its own weight with the new engine.



Tadaaa! This could not have gone better design-wise. The engine fits perfectly in the frame and uses space incredibly efficiently. I am so pleased with it.

Finally we were able to lower the body onto the frame for a test fit. The first time the frame was returning to the body in a long, long, long time.



There's still a lot to do to get this ready to be moved. The back lip has to be resealed with glue and riveted as the seam has come apart. Some of the rivnuts need to be replaced. The front and rear fascias need to be sanded and repainted. The door seals need to be scraped clean and resealed. And of course all the body panels and doors need to be reinstalled.

But for the first time in a while it's starting to look like a car again.

[FLUX @88]

great work! Thanks for sharing.

[Alexander]

Great project. There has been a few other EV conversion on a Delorean, but only a few...
I myself actually start my conversion .... today! I bought a 500miles only Delorean because I did not want to spend time restoring on top of the conversion. No rust, no dents or scratches in the body, nose/bumper perfect, rear panel/bumper perfect, wheels perfect etc. I have added 500 miles driving it without any glitches, except the AC that does not work. I have done a couple of full body off restorations and know how much effort that takes. You are a very courageous man ;-)
I am from Belgium/Europe where legislation is substantially limiting what can be done and what can not be done. Putting a Tesla motor is just not possible because I need to respect the original power range (luckily they look at continuous rather than peak power of the EV motor). The good news is that the instant torque of an EV will give a substantial boost to the driving experience, even if the peak power is not much higher than the petrol engine. I took a year studying and reviewing all the options and the legislation. I wish you all the best, and will follow your experiences for sure! I may start a thread myself.

[bitMuse]

Still not dead! Here's an update.

We managed to get the car back together in TWO WEEKS. TWO WEEKS. We went from rolling chassis to a chassis on the car with body panels bolted on in two weeks. With a working suspension and parking brake. That got it loaded onto a truck and over to the west coast, where we are now. It had to go in to storage for a bit as I sorted out a place to work on it -- also I needed a break after all that nonsense.

Now I'm back on the grind. Most recently I've been working on the battery pack. I had someone from Sentinel come out and do a 3D scan of the rear compartment. With that in hand, I booted up the ol' CAD program and started engineering.

I'm almost done that design now. I'm about .. probably 30 hours or so on this design. It uses a combination of flat pack bending, bolting, and tabbed welding. Using 3D printing and more. I'll be using a lot of SendCutSend for this portion of the project.

For no particular reason, I am likely going to create everything out of 304 stainless. Which is unfortunate because 304 stainless is about 2.5x more expensive than literally everything else. The bus bars are solid copper, or copper sandwiched with galvanized mild steel. The windows are 4mm lexan.

A penthouse has been included at the top (and is the last component I have to fill out.) Each cell pack has four 6mm steel bars running through (one each corner). I used nylon (the white pieces) structural spacers for the central holes to take load off the lexan, though the lexan could likely handle it. It will also provide compression for the pack.

The penthouse contains the orion BMS, the TC charger/inverter combo, the pyro fuse, analog emergency shutoff, AC charging dual-throw relays, thermister expansion bus, CAN computer, primary and secondary contactors, and pre-charge relay. Having all of this in one space will make it suitable simple to work on, I am hoping.



Undershot image! I designed three support struts for the battery pack to lay on. I opted for a design that bolts to the existing frame, rather than a welded addition. Some minor cutting will be necessary for the rear bumper support. 9 M6 bolts keep the struts bolted together which has many times the rated sheer strength required for the design.

6x 6.4mm stainless plates are welded to the bottom of the battery pack, and these locate to inner bars which have their own interfacing plates to thread 12 bolts directly into the bottom of the pack. Additionally the vertical struts have their own 6 bolts, so the rigidity of the battery box helps distribute load to the frame.



There's still plenty of room left in the engine bay. For a flux capacitor maybe? :P

[jangell]

Thanks for the update! What are you using for cells, and how many kWh are you targeting? The battery looks smaller than I expected, but mostly because my future plans (someday...) aim for 200-300 mile range, which suggests something into e 80-90 kWh range like a Mach-E or Model S. I expect to fill the entire engine compartment and then some, although I want to avoid putting anything in the trunk if possible.

Also, are you building a cooling/heating system for the batteries?

-- Joe

[Helirich]

Very cool. Thanks for posting.