I've been very busy lately, working on various projects (including this one). With school starting and everything I haven't been able to find the time to update this page. Hopefully now that I have things under control I'll be able to update this more often. I guess I'll just start where I left off:

ICE Component Removal

This is easily the most tedious part of the project, for me at any rate. It's also the dirtiest. It's a good reminder of how much cleaner EVs are when compared to ICE-powered cars. The ICE car requires antifreeze, oil, and gasoline to run. An EV requires none of these. Not to mention, EVs require much less maintenance than gas cars. They don't require oil changes or oil filters, they don't need alternators, timing belts, distributor caps or rotors, and a slew of other things. All they need is to have the motor brushes replaced every 80,000 or so miles, and the batteries topped off every once in a while. The batteries in an EV also need to be replaced every 3-5 years. Even including these things, EV maintenance is much cleaner and affordable than ICE maintenance.

I started by draining all of the fluids. Luckily for me, this was a simple task because I had run the truck out of gas before conversion. I didn't drain the oil because the engine is probably just going to go in some other project anyway, and draining the oil would have been a waste of time. The one thing I wish I had drained, but didn't, was the transmission fluid. I remembered this right before it all started draining out as I pulled the tranny out. So, I ended up with an empty transmission and half a bag of cat litter all over the garage floor.

I then removed the radiator and any other pieces that could hinder the removal of the engine. That included the fan and clutch, ignition system, wiring harnesses, fuel, vacuum, and antifreeze hoses, air cleaner, etc. I then loosened all of the bolts holding the engine in, and set off to rent an engine hoist.

Engine removal was pretty straightforward. The engine pretty much just slid right out, after a little tinkering to get the transmission shaft disengaged. I then decided that it would be best to pull the transmission as well. It'll be a lot easier to bolt the motor up to the transmission if it is removed from the vehicle. Plus, I'll get a chance to degrease it and perhaps paint it. The only problem is this: the transmission is a very annoying object to remove, with lots of little connections cropping up everywhere, and that obnoxious shift lever sticking up in the middle of the truck. I ended up dropping the crossmember and lowering the rear of the transmission instead of removing the stick.

Once everything was out of the truck, I had a very greasy engine compartment to work with. Since the electric motor is very clean, and will not spew oil all over the place like the ICE did, it made sense to clean up the engine compartment before proceeding. So, I rented a pressurewasher and got to work. A couple of hours later, I was rewarded with a sparkling clean engine compartment. Well, almost. You can see what it looks like now in the photo at the top left of this page. Pretty empty, eh?

Next: The Adaptor Plate and Related Issues