Post Mortem

To celebrate the many wonderful men and women who serve and have served our country in military service, I did an autopsy on my broken coupler. I know that does not really connect in any way, but that is what I did this memorial day. I did enjoy a couple flyovers of 7 WWII planes.

I got the engine hoist from a neightbor yesterday and started working on it today. Got the motor out and found that the key in the coupler did not break, but did work its way out as a few people said it might. What I am not happy about is, the coupler that I got from a company Evolve Electrics sent me to for the adapter/coupler combo, failed. I have notated this before, but they sent me the wrong thing a couple times and then they assured me what I had would work. I will note that I don't believe Evolve uses this company for adapters and couplers anymore. It turns out they used a part of a Lovejoy connector for the motor connection side and it is made from a soft steel. The torque from the motor shaft on the key deformed the keyway on the coupler and the key wiggled out. Here is a shot of the coupler with the deformed keyway.

Deformed Keyway in coupler

Here is a shot of the key. It survived, but has minor damage at the end which I believe is where it finally came out of the keyway.

Key with minor damage

Unfortunately the motor shaft also took some damage, but I think we will be fine once we get a better coupler made that extends down the majority of the shaft. You can see the dark area on the shaft at the front of it. This is how far this coupler would go onto the shaft. Not even half way.

Damage to motor shaft

So I showed the coupler to another neighbor and he said he thinks he can salvage the splined side of the coupler that goes on the transmission input shaft. He said he can make a better connection on the motor side and make it extend down the entire motor shaft and also make it a compression fit. He is a life saver. I would be looking at $300-400 for a new coupler. He makes stuff for his bosses at work, so they don't mind if he does a few side projects on the machines. I could have the coupler this week and the motor back in the car next weekend. As these things go it will probably be a couple weeks.

I thought I would take a couple photos of some of the more recent work I have done with the mounts for the vacuum braking system. This is the bracket that came with the vacuum pump and where it is mounted on the front sidewall of the car behind the headlight.

Vacuum Pump mount

 And this is the bracket I am making for the vacuum canister. It still needs a couple mounting holes and then a paint job.

Vacuum canister mounting bracket

So that wraps up the weekend. Hoping to get the re-worked coupler this week and maybe get the motor back in on the weekend. Then back to the vacuum brake system.

Back in the Saddle

April and May are the busiest months for my work followed closely by August and September. It is so easy for me to get discouraged about the project during these times because I just cannot spend time with ERX. This time of my life is probably not the greatest either since I have a teenager, a fairly new wife and a 21 month old toddler. This project has gone on for more than 3 years now. My wife and I are growing weary of it. Mostly my wife, but there have been many times I have almost thrown in the towel, and just about did at one point. But now that work has calmed down, I can see my family on a more regular basis, and there is some time to continue with the money pit, I mean, incredibly exciting electric car conversion project.

This last weekend I got in the garage again and did a little work, which got me more motivated to keep it going. The last thing I had done was run the charging wire from the rear of the car to the front where it will interconnect with the high voltage system. It would have made more sense to find space up front for the charger, but most of the space is in the rear, so that is where the charger ended up. I will connect to the charger with a regular AC plug through the fuel door. Anyways, I crimped some connectors on both ends of the 6AWG wire. The front connectors are just a ring terminal that will wire into my high voltage bus bars and the rear wires are now in an Anderson SB-50 connector. I could not easily access the fuel door yesterday because my neighbor has his Harley in the garage, so I moved onto another item that needed attention. I am installing a vacuum brake system for the power brakes. Some people just wire up a vacuum pump right up to the master cylinder and then when they hit the brakes the pump turns on, creates the vacuum and this allows the power brakes to easily stop the vehicle. There could be a very small delay between hitting the brakes and the pump turning on, so many people have added an extra vacuum canister to have a reservoir of vacuum. I had already mounted the bracket that came with the vacuum pump, but still needed a location and mount for the canister. I found a nice location near the pump and the master cylinder and just cut a small piece of angle iron to mount it on. I drilled the mounting holes for the canister, and that was all I could get done yesterday. I still need to drill a couple more holes for mounting it to the car, and then put a couple rivnuts in the car so I can bolt the bracket on. I should probably spray paint it as well.

This week I will be borrowing my neighbor's engine hoist, so hopefully this weekend I can pull the motor and see what broke in the tranny. I really hope it was just the key between the motor shaft and the coupler.