# Matt's 1970 Opel GT - Project Log



## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

I've decided to convert a 1970 Opel GT to electric.

As usual with my builds, this is a budget build not just for low cost, but trying to use as much unwanted/recycled/garbage/repurposed items as possible. It's not a performance build.

I'll try to update this front post to act as a table of contents for the progress on the thread.

To be updated, but, rough project specs:

- 1970 Opel GT ($200, but, $700, and up as I go).
- AC Forklift motor (free, from a scrapyard).
- Prius Controller (probably, haven't bought yet), with Damian's prototype brain for it. This might also be the charger.
- Recycled 18650 batteries from tool packs (already have).
- 70mph (110 km/hr) or so top speed (highway speed)
- At least 60 mile (100km) range, 120 mile (200km) would be better, I think I have enough cells.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

*Donor Vehicle:*

1970 Opel GT.

Aka: "MicroVette"
Aka: "Half a Corvette" (half the weight, half the power)
Aka: "Poor Man's Porsche"

Was designed by the same guy who later designed the C3 Corvette.

They were only built for 4 years, almost 50 years ago, 1969-1973. The bodies were made in France, the engineering was done in America, and the assembly was done in what was West Germany at the time.

I'm not a car person. I've never had a dream car. I've never really cared about cars. The only car I've ever even shown slight interest in, for the style, are Corvette. But there was never a year that had all the style features I wanted. I liked the sloped backs on the C2s, but the curved fronts on the C3s.

Turns out, the Opel GT has both of those elements. It's the non-Corvette I didn't know existed.

They were, at the time, the lowest drag car GM had ever built, with a drag coefficient of 0.35... not great for modern cars, but combined with it's low frontal area (it's a small car), it's not going to have too high of power requirements to travel at highway speed.

Small, light, stylish and not the expensive kind of old, the unwanted kind of old.

Perfect vehicle for me.









(Not my GT, I wish).

My favorite feature of the GT are the flip-up headlights. There's no motor, they flip open by the driver's muscles shoving a lever that you have to un-gently slam into place. 





(Not my GT)





(Lever)


These are rare-ish in Canada. Rust proofing was not as much of a thing back then, and most Canadian examples are rusted through or expensive. So, I was looking for one in the desert in the US.

I put word out that I was looking for a vehicle that didn't need to have an engine, and word of mouth led me to an estate sale in Phoenix.

A gentleman had passed away several month ago and had 3 Opel GTs. And he was a hoarder. His brother (the executor of the will), wanted the garage empty so he could have somewhere to empty and go through boxes. He wanted everything in the garage gone. If it wasn't gone by next week, he was hiring someone to haul it away for scrap metal.

With some help, I found another buyer for the nicest GT, and I bought another and some parts. 

Yellow GT: $200.
Orange GT parts (body): $200
Brand new seats: $200 for the pair (worth $350 each)
Box of other parts (brand new interior): $100 (worth about $1000).

So I was in for $700 total.

Throw in about $1000 for gas to drive down and haul it back to Canada, I'm at $1700. I don't think I could find something that good, for that price, back home. I'd watched every sale in North America for a few months.

Some generous strangers in the GT community inspected, photographed, negociated, transported, partially stripped the GTs for me, and offered to store them for a couple months on their property until I could find time to pick them up.

The problem (known in advance) is that the front of the car I'd bought (Yellow) was rusted all the way through, and floorpan was rusted out on both sides. The rocker panels (most of the strength) were rusted through big enough to stuff your hand in. So, it would never be a car again.









"The damage doesn't look as bad from out here..."












That's where the orange car comes in. It was an aborted V8 project, where someone had cut out the transmission tunnel to fit a larger engine and transmission. So it was missing about 18" of the middle of the vehicle, but the rest of it was solid.


















(View from the engine bay, looking back. Steering wheel is where the driver's seat goes).

It also had glass, popout windows, and a rear defroster (needed for Canada). The yellow lacked these.

So... the plan was... replace much of the rotted Yellow exterior, with the Orange exterior. And keep the Yellow interior body, which was missing from the Orange. Swap trim and glass and whatever else was needed.

And, all the grouchy anti-EV Opel GT owners who snarled that I was "ruining a classic" and "this is just another GT that'll end up in the junkyard" can't piss and moan about it, because I was the only one interested in buying the cars and saving them from the junkyard. Not that I care much, but, I do need GT-specific help and some goodwill in the community is nice.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

TL;DR - It's hard to get everyone to agree. But I kept asking until I had a plan and got it done.

*Paperwork*

I had to do the chopping while I was down there, as I had nowhere to put 2 cars back here, or a way to transport 2 cars.

This involved many conversations with many organizations, (5 total, each which was entitled to inspection), who had contradicting opinions about what makes a car "a car" and what makes a title "a title". All of this was new to me:

- One confidently said "a car" is the "frame". But this is a unibody car with no panels, and the body isn't stamped. It's one continuous welded body. There is no frame. Does that that mean to replace one rusted fender, "the car" is no longer "the car"? Ship of Theseus comes to mind.

- One said to have titles for every vehicle the parts came from (How would that be possible, if an owner sold different parts of the body to 5 different people?). Another org said I better not show up or mention two titles, because their system has no checkboxes for that and they might say it's now zero vehicles. I can repair a vehicle, but it's one vehicle, one VIN, and to never call it anything else.

- One said that's now a kit car (which can't be imported or driven). I said no, it's a restoration. They didn't process that well and gave up and let me talk to someone else there.

- One said the VIN on the dash is paramount, and the only thing they'd accept. Another said the VIN on the frame is paramount, and is the only thing they'd accept. Pointing out that the metal VIN plate on the dash is riveted literally into foam, which the scalding hot metal disintegrates in Arizona sun after 50 years and most surviving GTs are on their 3rd transplanted dash left some heads scratching.

- Most agreed it was illegal to remove the VIN from a vehicle. No one agreed what "a vehicle" was.

- No one could describe what maximum percentage of a car could be repaired or replaced from other vehicles. I threw out some numbers, 10%? 50%? 90%? I said I would keep asking questions, and repair the maximum amount allowable by their description, and I would list the repairs for their approval before I started. Everyone said "Oh, well, there's no _limit_, but..."

- I asked "Anywhere I stop, I have to cut and weld, so I'd like to take as much continuous vehicle as possible. Where do I have to stop?" Most said to just take as much as I want, structurally that's better to not be chopping it up into 20 pieces or whatnot, no need to play games.

- Many situations came down to semantics. The exact same physical situation described differently would be treated differently. One organization told me that you never remove the VIN from the vehicle. The VIN is the vehicle. You never move the VIN to another vehicle, that's a serious crime. But you may remove much of the vehicle around the VIN, and replace all the parts you took away with ones from another vehicle.

- The suviving VIN (this wasn't standardized 50 years ago), is in 2 places: manufacturer's plate on the firewall, and the driver's door. The Manufacturer's statement of origin, normally on the A-Pillar, is on the driver's door instead. In some jurisdictions, you have to store and occasionally carry the original door around with you to inspections to prove it was compliant for that year.

- One organization grilled me for 45 minutes about how the advice of another organization is unlawful, illegal, impossible, can't be repaired, will never work, don't you dare try it, etc. And then suddenly changed their tune and said: "But... if you show up with a title in your name, not someone else's title they signed over and a bill of sale, there's not much left for us to determine. Someone has already decided they call it a car, and they call you the owner of that car. We probably won't even look at it. So take your time, ask your questions, and get it inspected and titled in your name before we see it. And do not touch one thing on it between the time you pass that inspection and you bring it to us for our inspection, and tell us that when we ask." And as they seemed the pickiest and most contradictory, that, was my roadmap.

- One org was quite clear. They said "On the vehicle, somewhere, is there a VIN, that is still attached to and has never been removed from a piece of metal that was part of the original car?" I said "Yes, on the firewall". They said "Do you have a title for the vehicle that matches that VIN?", I said "Yes." They said "Then that is a car, and you own that car."

- Some orgs said that what they're concerned about is someone making two cars out of one, and a little bit about stolden parts. If it's obviously an old and low value car that needed repair, and I'm combining cars not splitting them, there's not much concern.

- When I arrived in Phoenix, before touching the cars, I spoke to the chief DOT inspector, described my plans, and asked him what I should do and not do to make him happy with both paperwork and vehicle. I got some solid answers, and did as he told me.

- Arizona is not a "title only" state. You can only get a title transfered to you after it passes inspection/smog/etc, at the same time they issue you your license plate and registration. This seemed like a gigantic obstacle, until I mentioned it wasn't running. If you declare it's not in running condition, then they will issue only a title, but it has to fail an inspection first. I said "It doesn't have an engine, does that count?" and they said "Perfect!"

- Being a hoarder, the paperwork wasn't completed properly. This involved some double-overnighting paperwork back to other states from the previous owner 15 years ago. And then it still being wrong, and driving around town tracking down other people to notarize new documents. And on that day, state-wide the title system nearly failed and slowed to a crawl. I spent 6 hours at the DMV that day.


I ended up spending a week longer in Phoenix doing all the work that I planned, *but it got done*. Inspected at 3 different organizations so far, and transported.


"The Car" is the yellow car, with the intact firewall, and intact original VIN. That stays. The transmission tunnel below it, that stays. The floorpan, that stays. All one continuous interior body. Bumper, lights, reflectors, wheels, front and rear suspension, doors, steering column, wiring harness, dash, instrument panel, brakes, e-brake and lever, all stays. Exterior body pieces from the Orange car were used to repair and restore what was rusted on the Yellow.

Temporarily, it had the yellow doors on it until I had it home.









(The ugly one, obviously).

I gave away the original seats, the engine, the extra windows, all the exhaust, headers, honestly I don't even know all of what, the guys stripped off all the gasline components before I even got there. The only things I had to pull was the engine before I left, and the gas tank when I got home. The other guys got free parts, I got free labor. Fair trade.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

TL;DR - No EV content yet, still restoration stuff.

*Inventory Time*

I stripped and packed just about everything I could off of both cars before I left. That and boxes of misc unknowns from the deceased's garage.

Lacking a garage of my own, I rented a storage unit to unpack and take inventory of exactly what I had and maybe identify what I would be missing and have to look for.

I've since figured out some of the unknowns here, but, here's most of it.



























































































(cont'd, 10 pic max)...


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

(Aha, #19 = Sun Visor).


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)




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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

Things I need:

- Transmission (there's 3 available locally for cheap).
- Rear orange tail light lens (available locally).
- Clutch (? Or is that part of the transmission ?)
- (Maybe windshield?)
- Windshield rubber ($129)
- Rear window rubber ($125)
- Door window rubber ($?)
- Brake lines (??? Napa/Autozone/??? I know nothing about how to replace these).
- New master cylinder? (apparently old ones aren't safe enough? No idea what to get to replace it)
- The missing half of the seat rails.


Hood needs to be rebent, and I'm not sure what to do about it being rusted all the way along.

I don't want to weld it, it'll make the paint blister on the opposite side.

I'm still half thinking I can get away with a 20' paintjob by using touchups. I really don't want to do blasting, priming, painting, etc. But maybe I'll have to.

Maybe I'll just wirewheel into the crack there, then epoxy the support beam back to the sheet. I've got some long welding clamps to hold it down, bricks would work too.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

*Phase 1: Bodywork Bonanza*

Before I start doing much electical planning, I need to have a body that's usable.

Two main issues:

1 - I need to finish up replacing the exterior body panels, (completing the Orange around the Yellow), they're just jammed (really jammed) into place right now around the original firewall and trans tunnel. I'm dreading getting them back out to work on them as it took 3 of us to get it in there and it fits by a hair. Windshield fitment has me particularly concerned, as only the lower rim is original and my spacing might not be perfect.

2 - The exterior body panels aren't as rust-free as I'd hoped. There's a couple holes, and the start of rust along the bottom edges.

Cosmetically, I wasn't as careful to protect the paint during transit (first time hauling, and certainly first time hauling a car), so there's a fair amount of transit damage to the paint. I'm considering a stop-gap solution that avoids stripping and painting the entire vehicle, just because feature creep kills my projects. 

Incoming several posts worth of body shots...




























































































(10 pic max, cont'd below)...


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

...

Particularly with the rust, I don't know what I'm doing besides "remove all rust with grinder" and "prime and paint".

I could back the wheelwell spots with new sheet, weld in place a few places.

...

With the interior floor panels, I was thinking of cutting along the lines indicated, forcing the two floors together with self-tapping sheet metal screws, and maybe removing one screw at a time and replacing it with a rivet. Then perhaps weld along some of the overlap seams, which I aim to be in structural corners where the box beams from the seat lie.

I'm a bit concerned about that leaving flaps of metal for water entry along long overlaps, but not sure what to do about it. Silicone, seam sealer, epoxy? Running a watertight weld bead long distances along sheet metal with flux-core seems a bit like a fool's errand.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

Day 2 - Bodywork Progress (catching closer to the current day):

- Pulled the doors back off. Probably the last time Yellow doors will be on this vehicle. Harder than it seems with one person.

- Pulled the gas tank out, the last remnant of its gas engine history. Had to lift the rear end to get access to the nuts (in the wheelwell, 10mm), that hold the brackets that block the gas tank bolts. Had a hell of a time removing the tank itself, it appeared stuck by some inconsistent contraption somewhere towards the back. Most of you would not have taken 30 minutes to figure out that, gee, a gas tank has a fuel line attached to it, which can only be yanked so hard before it refuses to let the tank move any farther. I finally removed the fitting along with the rest of my dignity.

- Elevated the end of the headlight cable and started dumping penetrating oil into it every 5 minutes. Pretty sure it's the lever that's frozen stiff, not the cable. Soaked the lever too, but, no progress yet.




























Lots of room for batteries. If it wouldn't throw the weight distribution off so much, I'd put them all where the gas tank was and have the car visually identical.

Since I'm adding 200-300 lbs of battery, I'm not sure what to do differently with the springs. They're not coilovers, so, adjusting them isn't easy. Presumably the height of the spring won't be changing, so, that means finding another pair of springs the same dimensions, but slightly thicker or harder tempered material. 

Suspension is black magic to me.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

*Day 3 - Bodywork Progress:*

- Bought 2 more jackstands, lifted the vehicle up on all 4.

- Weighed the big motor, 255-260 lbs. I can just barely lift it with my fingers around the edges. This is good news, I was worried it was 300-400lbs.



















- Weighed the small motor, I don't know why, I won't be using it, but anyway, about 100-105lbs.



















- Daily routine of pumping penetrating oil up the headlight cord and soaking the lever, and hammering on it finally yielded results. It still jams if I push it all the way forward, but I think it's 80% of the way there now and if I don't end-jam it, I can actuate it smoothly without the hammer now.










Running out of busywork to help procrastinate the necessary upcoming bodywork I really don't want to have to do. Even started sorting my tools on the temporary workbench.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

*Day 4 - Bodywork Progress:*


*Bodywork Plan:*

- Was thinking "I could use a creeper to get under there and take a close look, maybe I should build one", I've seen a creeper at a thrift store one day in my whole life, and that day was tonight on my way past. Done.

- General layout, Orange is missing the whole trans tunnel from a suspected V8 mod. Yellow only has the trans tunnel, floor dies before the rockers. It has 5 out of 6 seat rails, and some patchy floor.










- Took a peak up her skirts. This is more challenging than I imagined (like all of this is). The floorpan does not just bend up to meet the seat box rails, nor does it gap them. There is a full box there. This is obvious, but didn't cross my mind until now. Yellow and Orange will definitely not just mesh by virtue of pushing hard enough.



















- Best I can figure, this is how to get it done. I suspect there's not enough draft angle in the box sections for the two pieces to nest like dinner plates, so extensive surgery is required. Cut the yellow before it binds the in orange corner. Cut the orange before it binds in the yellow corner. Cut the captive nuts and floor off of the yellow under the box. Then yank the two together with sheet metal screws. Unscrew them one at a time and rosette weld the hole. Grind it flush. Consequence will be that the yellow floor sits 1 sheet metal thickness high, and 1 sheet metal thickness inside & forward.










Had two choices there for doing the interior weld. Fold the orange floor out of the way and do a full seam from underneath, or gouge it in stitches from the top and grind it flush. I'm leaning towards stitches. 

Also, I have almost zero chance of getting the yellow piece out of the car by myself (took 3 of us, crowbars, flexing metal and one corner of the floor cut away, hammering, floor jacking, and several hours to get it in). Means I can wedge it around a bit in there but everything will be a tight fit for grinder or saw. It's probably a week's worth of evenings if I have to remove the firewall section.

- I can see concrete through the doubled-up floors in a few spots. Floor will still need some patching out of the sections I cut away.










- Looks simpler from a top-down view.










...

...

That's all I got so far. And that's the easiest part. I think I can do all of that floor work cutting prep without moving anything else. I'll want all the other sections prepped and test fit and lined up for welding before I finalize it though.

- Attempted a windshield repair. Rust flakes would not clean up with water or WD40 and a rag. Inside of the windshield is basically the surface of a file. Almost nothing came off. So, I scraped it with the edge of a magnetic pickup tool a hundred times. Some material came out, but it also filed away a 45 degree section of my pickup tool. Also, anyone's guess as to how scratched that glass is going to be. Maybe it'll polish out, or I can use a glass filler to repair the finish. Oh well. Also, WD-40 instantly liquifies the windshield gasket. Great for cleaning off your fingers though.










- Bodywork isn't done. Second easiest part is the rear of the Trans Tunnel (driveshaft tunnel at this point). And it'll be tricky. There were 3 sheets of metal. I think there's a mostly cosmetic top, a cosmetic bottom, and a flat structural middle that holds the majority of the strength.










My plan is:

1 - Probably weld a narrow-ish (3/8" wide?) bit of angle iron in the middle line, for the trans tunnel to sit on.
2 - Can opener the bottom sheet a bit, so it clears the 3/8" long lip as it passes by.
3 - Weld the middle from above.
4 - Hammer the bottom back into place, seam with a 1" wide 1/16" strip welded on either side, yanked tight by sheet metal screws.
5 - Bigger da gob, betta da job, to gap fill the top. Or use another helper strip if the gap is too large. Maybe a semi-circle helper ring I'll tuck between layers before I drop it in place.

I think that takes care of the Trans Tunnel section.

Then there's just:

- The floor rails with a huge gap, 
- The verticals that don't line up because I cut 3/8 on the wrong side of the line and ended up with 3/4" too much material, 
- The steering column that I know is binding because I couldn't reach the back with either the saw or the grinder and the cut is all wonky.
- The critical windshield arc that I know is messed up and bulging.
- The meshing of the firewall to the fenders, A-pillars, etc. Which I spent the most amount of time on in Phoenix and actually turned out respectably with 3 days of work and help from a retiree with with 35 years bodywork experience.

But I think the floor is holding up (.. ha...) all of those other ones and exacerbating all their issues because the floor can't be where the floor is supposed to be right now.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

*Too Long, Didn't Read? - Passenger side floor is almost done, see pictures.*

*Day 5 - Bodywork Progress:*

- Hemmed and hawed about doing it perfect, had no one to bounce ideas off of, eventually just got out the grinder and got to work.

- Jacked up the back of the trans tunnel until it popped clear of the cross member. Shed a tear for the hour we spent ramming it into place there.

- Was too chicken to pull the whole yellow piece out, which would be the right way, and probably has to be done later anyway, but... chickened out. Kept jacking up the trans tunnel to get enough room to stick an angle grinder between the two floorpans.










- Began gouging the inside of the orange seat rails, so that the yellow can nest there.










- Realized that the yellow trans frame rail is welded underneath the floorpan, and would need to clear the entire orange box seat rail, so the end of the seat rail has to be removed. Also removed yellow floorpan under yellow seat rail so that orange can nest underneath.










- Kept trimming Orange on the trans-tunnel side, to clear the entire yellow trans tunnel frame rail (orange has no frame rail, previous owner drilled out the spot welds and removed it). Needed trimming up front too.










- A peak inside the end of the yellow seat rail without belly pan. Not much left of the front either, so I just cut through the rust about 2/3 of the way until there was metal on the pan again.










(cont'd).

- Trimmed little bits and pieces until I thought the yellow would nest. Still needs the captive nuts ground off the yellow.










- Hadn't considered that the seat rails are not continuous hollow structures, they're obviously made of separate C-shapes of metal welded at the flanges. So they still won't nest. I have to choose between a vertical slice on the orange at the seat rail joint, or, a 90-degree pair of cuts into the yellow and remove the resulting flap.










I think I'm going with option 1, as, that far towards the interior, the orange is weak and the yellow is strong.

...

So once I make that cut and drill out the yellow nuts, *the passenger side floor should be done.*

The driver's side is not a mirror image. The trans rail takes some extra bends and has extra width for the driver's feet, sooner. Doesn't change anything structurally. On the driver's side I have the entire yellow floor pan and all 3 seat rails, but I can't see why I'd do anything differently. I'll cut off the outside seat rail and the majority of the under-seat area from yellow, and perform surgery exactly the same.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

*Day 6 - Reverse Procrastination!*

- Stopped by the storage unit "just to pick up a bracket" for another Opel guy. 

- Well, while I'm here I'll just take a look at the driver's side. 

- Can't find the sharpie to draw some cut lines, guess I'll just score them with the grinder.

- Well, a little grinding won't hurt, just to get the under-seat area out of the way so I can see what I'm working with. 

- Well that's not so bad, new grinder disk, might as well use it up.

- Well I might as well get down on the creeper and take some pictures from underneath so I know where to cut next time.

- Camera battery is almost dead? Can I reach the angle grinder? While I'm here, might as well just make a few cuts.

Couple hours later the floorpan has finished being cut on both sides and trimmed for the transmission frame rails.

A little bit of vacuuming to do and need to drill out the captive seat nuts from Yellow, and then the floor will be ready for a test-fit.




























... Heck I even remembered to take the bracket I originally went there to pick up.

Today was the 15-day cancellation window to let them know I'm out at the end of my nearly-free month. Committed to being gone before July now.

*And, I'm now caught up posting to the current day. That's where I sit.*


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## brian_ (Feb 7, 2017)

MattsAwesomeStuff said:


> Since I'm adding 200-300 lbs of battery, I'm not sure what to do differently with the springs. They're not coilovers, so, adjusting them isn't easy. Presumably the height of the spring won't be changing, so, that means finding another pair of springs the same dimensions, but slightly thicker or harder tempered material.


For stiffer you want thicker wire, or fewer turns, not harder material. And you want either a longer free length with the same stiffness, or a stiffer spring with the same loaded length.


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## Duncan (Dec 8, 2008)

Suggestion

Get a length of scaffolding pole a couple of feet longer than the car and make a couple of supports - can be timber -
Then make a rotisserie for the body shell - it's small enough and light enough for this to be a relatively simple job

That will make fixing all of your bodywork a ton easier


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

brian_ said:


> For stiffer you want thicker wire, or fewer turns, not harder material. And you want either a longer free length with the same stiffness, or a stiffer spring with the same loaded length.


Good to know. I don't think I'd trust my own interpretation of any suspension component, so I'd probably just say "I have X, I've added Y, what would work?" and have someone who knows prescribe an answer.

I mean, what I'd really like to do is replace the whole garbage rear suspension with something better (maybe even a whole EV assembly, motor and all), but, while that's easily within my abilities build-wise, it's completely black magic to me decision and planning-wise.

Actually I did look into a Smartcar EV, I think someone here was selling one, and, it's damned close width-wise.



Duncan said:


> Get a length of scaffolding pole a couple of feet longer than the car and make a couple of supports - can be timber -
> Then make a rotisserie for the body shell - it's small enough and light enough for this to be a relatively simple job


I've considered that, lots of guys do. I could walk up and measure one from a local guy who built one and straight up duplicate it. I've also considered whether it would take more work to build that than it would to just finish the job. I think it's net negative if this is the only work I'm doing. If I'm sanding it back to metal and repainting, it would just about be a necessity. If I was doing suspension work, sure. But just for bodywork, I think it's faster to just do the job than to build the tool to do the job easier.

I'm really trying my hardest to stay on task and push for completion, since so many of my projects die at the 80% line. I think I'd rather have a crappier car I can drive, than a nicer car I'll never finish... much as every little improvement I could make to it is frustrating to let go of.


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## brian_ (Feb 7, 2017)

MattsAwesomeStuff said:


> I don't think I'd trust my own interpretation of any suspension component, so I'd probably just say "I have X, I've added Y, what would work?" and have someone who knows prescribe an answer.


This is one of the challenges of a relatively rare vehicle, although in this case there seems to be good enthusiast support. There might be a substitution from a heavier model using related components (another Opel or the Chevette?) that would work.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

- Hit a deer last week. Everything between bumper and engine was shattered. Brought up the trailer, spent 2 hours loading it poorly. 2 minutes down the road blew a tire on the trailer. Long night. Spent the whole week learning far more about cars and what components are than I ever wanted to learn about ICE vehicles. 4 trips to the junkyard, (know how Pick N Pull techs drain antifreeze when prepping vehicles? They jab an awl into the lower radiator hose, leaving an imperceptible scar, and a leak that only shows up when you reach temperature).

Really burnt out on automotive bullshit, kicked my feet out from under me on doing it for fun and on a deadline, and used up half of my time available before I have to move :/.


*Day 7-ish, Progress:*



- Drilled out the seat rail bolts. First one I gradually stepped up to larger and larger sizes, then used pliers underneath to rip out the last bits that were left. Holes 2-5 I just left the largest bit in the drill, drilled down and wiggled around in a circle until the whole nut pipped loose, 10x as fast.










- Trimmed the rear of the trans tunnel floor a few times so it wasn't so hard to fit. Bodywork on a small car is like moving a couch: a 2nd person makes it 10x as easy. Climbing back there, bracing with my feet, using a lever to shove it forward, it being caught on something, not sure what, crawling out, poke and prod at suspected parts, climb back in, repeat.

- Some hangups underneath, dealt with one-by-one.

- Couldn't find the seat rail bolts (didn't look hard), used the spare door hinge bolts since they were tapered anyway for easy starting and had huge washers.

- Floor is fitted!










- It's not perfect, I think it's still sitting 1/4" high in some places (and 1/4" forward somehow, judging by the floorpan), but I can't tell without drilling a peep hole. There's dirt and debris underneath, needs to be removed for better fitting later anyway. But, it's mostly in!










- Rear of the trans tunnel... to think I had to use a crowbar to get this to clear the lip of the crossmember, but now that it's seated, there's 1/2"-1" gap for me to fill.

- My earlier sketch of where the 3 layers of sheet metal go was wrong. More details on that when I get around to fixing it.










- Heading underneath now that the seat rails are located and floorpan is roughly correct. This should be an accurate representation of the gap there is to fill on the trans rails. 1/4" and 1/2" or so. Again, I'd cut away this much, earlier, just to make it fit via crowbar. Amazing how much extra room there is now.










...

Firewall/Windshield arch now has lots of room and lots of play in it.

Next up is making a template of the windshield area to properly locate and/or size the bodywork there. Not that there's much choice about it, but, definitely want to do that before I start anchoring and welding the seat area.

...

6 days until my nearly-free first month is up. Looks like I won't get it done, so, probably should schedule 2 of those days to pack up and move elsewhere.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

Day 8: Barely any progress.

Getting overwhelmed with how much work to do in too little time, and not really knowing how to do any of the remaining work. I can do 1 or 2 of the ~5 areas that need help, but, I can't, I have to do them all perfectly before I start welding.

Mucked around sweeping and tidying just to stay busy.

- Unbolted the seat rails and lifted them up to clean between the sheets and inspect them. Some odd findings.

- These were nested perfectly, and yet, 1 foot farther down towards the footwell, suddenly the floorpan doesn't match up by a 1/4". What gives?










- Seat rails are flush and touching at bolt holes, but, 1" to the right, somehow at least 1/4" vertical gap. This one I later discovered may be the result of the orange being pulled into a dome shape, so it must be jammed somehow and the bolt yanked it flush.










- Not sure what to do about that, and about double floorpan in general. At first I was thinking "Extra material is good!" and now I'm thinking "The gap between the two will hold water, which will rust both faster than if one layer was just bare."

- Thinking about how to sleeve the inside of the trans rail to bridge the gap. "All I've got is some scrap bedrail, I don't want to go buying stock just for this..." Oh. Bedrail pressfits perfectly in place. Just gotta trim it for length and round the edges so it nests easy. Then either gouge-weld or drill it to rosette weld. About due for some good luck.










...

And that was it for the night. Too scared about screwing something up to take out the grinder and grind anything. All kinds of places on the firewall need trimming. Considered cutting the yellow into a top and bottom section. Top would have firewall and a bit of a vertical piece, bottom would have the tunnel and floorpan. Then I can fit them separately. Except, that's probably the best locating place on the vehicle. Maybe if I use 3 pieces of flatbar and self-tapping screws above and below where I intend to cut, so that when I'm putting it back together I can just re-align those flatbar strips.

More or less resigned to not being out by the end of the month. Yet rent is as much as I paid for the two cars. Hrmph.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

Update, Bodywork:

Keep in mind, I've very minimal bodywork experience. The goal here is to make the yellow piece fit the orange pieces, and no longer just in a rough way.

After months of staring at things and not knowing what to do, and it being too late one night to run a grinder, I eventually just grabbed tin snips and just started cutting to motivate myself into acting. My logic was: If you cut something tonight that you're not supposed to, you can fix it faster than you figure out what's perfect (and won't ever anyway).

Started with the passenger's floorpan:










Whew. I measured from the frame edge underneath and still got it wrong. It varies from 1" overlap to zero overlap. Oh well. First bodywork in 3 months, broke the seal. Onward next night!










That's the driver's floorpan. Good enough.










I'd been trying to figure out why my nested seat rails were making the floorpan so far off. I figured it had something to do with the added sheet metal width and not being perfectly flush. Nope. When I lined up the metal seam at the bottom of the rail, the floor grooves on the very first groove are already 3/8" off.

Why?

I figure, because they were hand assembled. Each car is a little bit different. Great news, it means that basically nothing matters precision-wise, if the factory was so variable itself.










This yellow blob has a vin. This yellow blob is "a car". The rest is all "parts".

Quite a compact little car, about 4' x 4'.

I was terrified of doing this, because it took 3 of us half a day in Phoenix to shove this yellow bit into the orange body. But, at the time there were 4 more floorpan pieces and 2 more seat rails attached. 

I figure most of you have never seen these panels out of the car. Let's take a tour!










Check out the view!










Quick peak up her skirts from behind.










From headlights to diff, nothing but space.










I highly recommend removing all this unnecessary paneling when servicing your GT. It makes working on the car so convenient. Rolling from parcel shelf to engine bay without even having to lay down on the creeper.










Okay, back to work. This is from inside the engine bay, looking at the box where the cabin heater assembly goes (VIN plate is just over that yellow lip).

See the top of the yellow lip where the metal is torn?

In order to originally shove the yellow car inside the orange body, the three of us used prybars and my legs. It did not want to go. This resulted, I suspect, in bowing the top of the firewall upwards into an arc, and deforming some of the metal below. 

This is going to be an ongoing issue.

The yellow panel is fit. That's how much it doesn't fit by. I have to go at some of the sections where it's being blocked and start chopping metal until it fits.










I scribe some lines from underneath the car to see where I have to clean the sheet metal to prep it for welding, and then flapwheel the grime, paint, and undercoat off.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

This is about the best the three of us ever had it fit in Phoenix, and that was while the far side of the trans tunnel was still floating in air. It got much worse when we shoved it downward.

Good news, both sides of the dash arch need to move in the same direction.










Driver's side by the wiring harness lines up decently already.










A bodywork mentor once told me to make the firewall fit, it would help to remove one layer of the double-thick sheet metal along the edge where it attaches to the fender. This was my first attempt, I ground through it in some places by accident.

Someone pointed out you zig-zag a double-90 degree bend to make one layer of sheet metal cup under the next, so I used a cresent wrench to bend and rebend it gradually along the edge. Seemed to work. Doesn't show on camera.










Cleaned up the passenger footwell where the panels will overlap (by about an inch).

The driver's side, in contrast is almost butted flush (I got frustrated in Phoenix and ran out of time, so I just cut once).

I figure, on such a long seam through the air, some overlap is just fine. I'm not worried about water ingress like I am a bit on the floorpans.










For the first time ever, the entire dash arch of the yellow firewall fits inside the orange body. This is farther than we ever got in Phoenix.

Great success!

However...










Great failure!

Two issues:

1 - The inside of the lip (the edge) matches, but the main supporting lip does not.

2 - Harder to show on camera, but the angle of the lip is way off. Like, 10+ degrees off (The yellow is angled lower than orange).

Perplexingly, this was not always a problem. I remember it fitting better than this.

I think what has to happen is that I have to tack some of the yellow in place, in the right place (starting here) and then forcing it into place everywhere else. I care about the fitment of the windshield, I do not care about the fitment of the seats and trans tunnel.

I may, after keeping it all this time, chop the firewall into lower horizontal (trans tunnel, floorpan, seat rail) and upper vertical (dash) sections. If you think of them as an "L" shape, I'm sure that the angle of the "L" was deformed during all the prybarring and that's what's forcing the angle to be wrong here.

...

You're now caught up on progress.

...

I'm a bit stumped about where to go next, because I'm doing multiple processes at the same time.

1 - What do I coat the cleaned metal with before welding? For example, in the overlapped section, should it stay naked? Do I use weld-through primer? (I've heard that's for aluminum or galvanized steel, but I've had it recommended before on bodywork). Do I use anything? 

2 - I'm going to attempt to tack a few spots up top when I can get the dash arch perfect. Then weld in angle iron at the trans tunnel rails at the Yellow/Orange gap on one side. Then shove the bottom end in, and start welding it all up.

I don't know any of the obvious "Before you do X, make sure you Y" or "Don't do X" or "It is critical that you do X", and so on. So, any advice before I ruin things further, now's the time, because it's all about to be a lot more permanent.


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## brian_ (Feb 7, 2017)

MattsAwesomeStuff said:


> I'd been trying to figure out why my nested seat rails were making the floorpan so far off. I figured it had something to do with the added sheet metal width and not being perfectly flush. Nope. When I lined up the metal seam at the bottom of the rail, the floor grooves on the very first groove are already 3/8" off.
> 
> Why?
> 
> I figure, because they were hand assembled. Each car is a little bit different. Great news, it means that basically nothing matters precision-wise, if the factory was so variable itself.


I doubt that car-to-car hand assembly variations are the issue at all. For one thing, no one hand-assembled an Opel without jigs and fixtures... this isn't some Italian exotic, so it was presumably efficiently built with rational tooling, other than perhaps the first few hundred which were apparently virtual pre-production units. Although the GT body was built by Brissonneau et Lotz (a contact supplier to Renault and Opel), this was a mass production operation, not a custom coachbuilder. 

More importantly, there is zero chance that anyone manually formed the grooves in those panels, which were stamped by dies in a press. I assume that you are either seeing year-to-year variations, or they are not aligned at the point where you think they are.


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## electro wrks (Mar 5, 2012)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18cW_yHo3PY


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

brian_ said:


> More importantly, there is zero chance that anyone manually formed the grooves in those panels, which were stamped by dies in a press. I assume that you are either seeing year-to-year variations, or they are not aligned at the point where you think they are.


Ahh, no, not what I meant. The panels themselves are surely identical. Even year-to-year the GT only had one 4-year production run, almost everything between models is exactly the same. 

So, the grooves are perfectly lined up in the floor pan. The issue is that the entire floor pan is 3/8" forward of where it should be because they weren't lined up exactly the same before welding.



> I doubt that car-to-car hand assembly variations are the issue at all.


I think you're wrong there, based on what some old-timers have been telling me.

The left line (where I say "lined up") is a weld seam. It's lined up perfectly at the bottom edge of the seat rail. But the floorpan immediately after that is shifted 3/8" forward. So, panels match but the exact point where they're spot welded do not.

Far as I know there's no obedience to a model year, they used parts and panels (and even VINs) from previous year and then switched mid way through.

...

Yellow and Orange are different years though, so, you may be onto something there.

Far as I've been told though, back in the day subtle variations in the panel placement is the norm. For example, doors back then were all adjustable, inward/outward, tilt, rotation, etc could all be tweaked by adjusting various bolts. By like, a half inch in any direction. And you'd need to use that, because each finished vehicle would be slightly different. Modern vehicles are so well jigged and use such larger panels that the doors are fixed, every car body is the same, no adjustment needed, you just bolt them on.

Had a 75-year old career bodywork guy show me his GT and the two of mine there and how none of the measurements were exactly the same. He said that back in the day when replacing panels or doors after a cosmetic crash (any vehicle), it would be standard procedure to get out the sheers and "trim" the donor door 1/4" if it was too long for the other body on a supposedly identical production run. With adjustment, you'd just aim for a middle of the road panel gap and that's what you get.

With how many smaller panels old cars have, that's supposedly normal. He warned me to watch out for it.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

Just posting for the sake of posting, to keep things fresh in my mind...

Considering whether to have a transmission or not.

Transmission:
- Clutch. Good idea to have a safety disconnect on a DIY drivetrain, in the event of relays welding shut or, who knows what, can always stomp the clutch to disconnect power.
- Mechanical reverse. No advantage to me on an AC motor.
- Gears. Not much advantage to me, bottomless torque available.

Direct Drive:
- 100+lbs of weight savings with no transmission. Less weight, more batteries.
- No expensive or precise adapter plate to machine (I presume driveshaft is much more forgiving for alignment).
- Clears up engine bay a little bit for battery or storage.
- Moves weight further back (if that's still an advantage with all the batteries back there and engine gone).

...

Can I do direct drive?

- Rims are 13". Normal tires look to stick out 3" all the way around, so 19" total tire height. 19" * 3.14 = ~5 feet circumference.
- 5280 feet in a mile, 5 feet per revolution, means *1056 tire revolutions per mile.*
- I want 80mph max speed (65 would be fine, but, 80mph is a ceiling I'd ever drive at even when passing), so 84480 revolutions per hour, or, *1408 tire RPM.*
- 3.44 final drive/diff reduction ratio from prop shaft, means *motor has to spin at 4843 RPM.*

My 3ph, 6 pole, ACIM is rated for 961 RPM. So... this is 500% the rotation speed it's expecting.

That said, that would still be okay for a DC motor with a commutator, so, it should be plenty fine for an AC motor like this... right?

...

I think I'm going to skip the transmission and directly drive the prop shaft.

Thoughts? Anything I miss?


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## electro wrks (Mar 5, 2012)

I suspect, as with your direct drive shaft drive motorcycle, you will be stuck with a less than ideal reduction ratio and no easy way to change it. You might make sure you have a rear axle that has a good selection of different ratios available. But, they may not have a high enough ratio and changing them could be expensive and time consuming.

My suggestion would be to keep the transmission for now. If you find that driving in the straight through, 1:1, ratio is fine for you, by all means go transmissionless. Another possibility is that one of transmission's intermediate ratios is best and could be matched overall with a change in the rear axle ratio.

I know these Opel GTs are cute cars for a conversion. But, the lack of a trunk lid really restricts access to the inside rear of the car. If you plan on putting components in that area, you'll have to make sure the seats slide well out of the way, if they don't already. Or, are easy removable. And, practice your contortionist skills.

Cutting-up and welding a vehicle this much invariably throws off the body and door/hood/window opening alignment. I've found if you keep the doors (and if practical hood and lids) in place, with their hinges and latches, they can be used as a good guide for their openings. Pull the door glass(and all other glass, if possible) so it won't be damaged by weld spatter. On some vehicles, there are factory alignment holes on the bottom surface of the body. If not, you can make your own for checking the alignment by making periodic length-wise and diagonal measurements between the holes as the cutting and welding progresses, If you can, find two normally parallel flat surfaces or mounting points near the front and rear of the vehicle. Clamp long straight edges(square tubing is a good choice) on them. By eye, line-up the straight edges to check for twist in the body. If the straight edges and mounting points are stout enough, the can be used to correct the twist. 

The hydraulic cylinder based body alignment tools of course are the best for correcting alignment problems, but the common mechanical Hi-Lift jack can also do a good job.


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## brian_ (Feb 7, 2017)

electro wrks said:


> The hydraulic cylinder based body alignment tools of course are the best for correcting alignment problems, but the common mechanical Hi-Lift jack can also do a good job.


I was surprised how affordable hydraulic body jack kits are...
Porta-Power for collision repair at Princess Auto


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## brian_ (Feb 7, 2017)

MattsAwesomeStuff said:


> Transmission:
> - Clutch. Good idea to have a safety disconnect on a DIY drivetrain, in the event of relays welding shut or, who knows what, can always stomp the clutch to disconnect power.
> - Mechanical reverse. No advantage to me on an AC motor.
> - Gears. Not much advantage to me, bottomless torque available.


Near-maximum torque is available all the way to stall, but "bottomless" suggests "unlimited", which certainly isn't true.



MattsAwesomeStuff said:


> - Rims are 13". Normal tires look to stick out 3" all the way around, so 19" total tire height. 19" * 3.14 = ~5 feet circumference...


19" is a very small tire... Austin Mini sized. The wheel and tire nominal diameter is measured at the bead seat, not the visible outer edge of the rim; I think your tires more likely have about 5 inch sidewalls. Some sources list 155SR13 or 165SR13 as the Opel GT stock tire size, which would be 155/82R13 or 165/82R13 in the current system; if that's it, the tire diameter is more like 23" to 24". You might want to check the size and the calculations.

Many tire spec charts list the revolutions per mile or kilometre for each size, saving some calculations and accounting for the effective rolling radius being smaller than half the static inflated diameter.



MattsAwesomeStuff said:


> My 3ph, 6 pole, ACIM is rated for 961 RPM. So... this is 500% the rotation speed it's expecting.
> 
> That said, that would still be okay for a DC motor with a commutator, so, it should be plenty fine for an AC motor like this... right?


The speed that the motor can stand mechanically will depend on bearings and rotor construction. 10,000+ RPM is no problem for motors of that size which are designed for it, but I have not even a guess at what is reasonable for that motor.



MattsAwesomeStuff said:


> I think I'm going to skip the transmission and directly drive the prop shaft.
> 
> Thoughts? Anything I miss?


If you had more information (or really any solid information) about the motor performance as a function of speed and available voltage, I would suggest looking at this configuration to see if you will have workable or desirable levels of torque and power across your operating speed range. Without that it's kind of a gamble, but if it works out this is the most straightforward setup.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

electro wrks said:


> I suspect, as with your direct drive shaft drive motorcycle, you will be stuck with a less than ideal reduction ratio and no easy way to change it.


I'll definitely be stuck, that's true.

"Less than ideal" is true, but my concern is whether it's contextually true, I.E. will I notice or care?

This car originally had a top speed of 117mph. I'll never take it above 80mph, and likely not above 70mph.

From what I understand of most DIY conversions, they never use 1st gear, almost never use 2nd gear, leave it in 3rd gear 95% of the time, and maybe 5% of the time pop it into 4th (1:1). And those would be on heavier vehicles.

So, me being functionally stuck in 4th (or 3rd, depending on whether 4th is an overdrive for those people) all the time is not a big deal.



> My suggestion would be to keep the transmission for now. If you find that driving in the straight through, 1:1, ratio is fine for you, by all means go transmissionless.


That makes sense, but I think I'll do the opposite because either way I am going to have a bunch of rework to do if I change whether to have a transmission or not, and I think it's slightly more likely to not have it. Also, making it work with a transmission is a lot of extra work in itself (adapter plate, etc), so that's the big part of the effort to avoid if possible.

That is, I suspect I'll drive it straight through, and if it's irritable to me, then I'll look at adding the transmission back in. I'm not changing the frame or anything like that to fit the motor without the tranny, so it should be fairly reversible.



> I know these Opel GTs are cute cars for a conversion. But, the lack of a trunk lid really restricts access to the inside rear of the car.


It's my biggest pet peeve of the car, yeah. I've even considered modifying it to have a hatch, but, trying to narrow my scope.



> If you plan on putting components in that area, you'll have to make sure the seats slide well out of the way, if they don't already. Or, are easy removable. And, practice your contortionist skills.


I'm not too worried about that. It'll just be battery boxes and wiring. Motor will go into the front of the trans tunnel.

It's not the kind of thing that I'll be swapping out while grocery shopping. If something needs major work, the seats can come out to do it.



> Cutting-up and welding a vehicle this much invariably throws off the body and door/hood/window opening alignment. I've found if you keep the doors (and if practical hood and lids) in place, with their hinges and latches, they can be used as a good guide for their openings.


No pillars were or will be cut, so, that's good. No door frames are changing. Rocket panels are solid. It's just floorpan and firewall.

When I took measurements of the bottom of the windshield arch, it lined up perfectly (as I can with a tape measure) with another GT I took measurements from. So, I didn't deform it when removing the panel.

I'm not altering the shape, it appears as if the firewall and dash arch I'm putting in from the yellow vehicle is the correct size (although deformed from me shoving it into place).

So, that leaves the floorpan. And, I don't care about the floorpan. It'll be more than good, it'll be "good enough"! 

I actually spent a lot of time worrying about critical alignment things but, from what I can tell from guys who've rebuilt them, and some of who've come to see it, nothing I'm doing requires any kind of critical precision.



> Pull the door glass(and all other glass, if possible) so it won't be damaged by weld spatter.


Too late for that, previous owner who cut away the trans tunnel ruined what might be a $700 windshield with direct grinder spray.

But considering I'm using flux-core, I was thinking of making two shields of thin sheet metal on a flexible tube with a magnet base, to basically shoulder every seam with and keep the spatter to a minimum. And/or adding a big rectifier to convert the flux-core to DC at least, cut down on that some more.

...



Brian said:


> I was surprised how affordable hydraulic body jack kits are...


Damn. There's a kit for $99 CAD.

https://www.princessauto.com/en/det...wer-autobody-and-frame-repair-kit/A-p8667826e

I don't think there's anything I need it for, all the edges of what I'm welding to are the strongest parts of the car, but, that's reaaaaally tempting.



> Near-maximum torque is available all the way to stall, but "bottomless" suggests "unlimited", which certainly isn't true.


Contextually bottomless. I think I have more torque than the axles can tolerate. There's obviously a limit, but for multiple reasons I likely won't even approach it.

The important context is "Will the lack of lower gears result in frustrating performance limits?" and I think the answer, as typical with EVs, is no. If most people who keep a transmission are still starting in 3rd gear, I should be okay.



> The wheel and tire nominal diameter is measured at the bead seat, not the visible outer edge of the rim; I think your tires more likely have about 5 inch sidewalls. Some sources list 155SR13 or 165SR13 as the Opel GT stock tire size, which would be 155/82R13 or 165/82R13 in the current system; if that's it, the tire diameter is more like 23" to 24". You might want to check the size and the calculations.


Ahh, my mistake. I wasn't around the car to measure. That's good to know. Circumference is linear with diameter, so, now the max revs I'd need are 3840rpm. Even better.



> The speed that the motor can stand mechanically will depend on bearings and rotor construction. 10,000+ RPM is no problem for motors of that size which are designed for it, but I have not even a guess at what is reasonable for that motor.


Bearings, I can't imagine wouldn't be fine at 4000rpm.

Rotor construction... likewise. I can't see that it would be built so flimsy as to actually fail anything close to the RPM that's listed on the nameplate. It doesn't actually say what that RPM is, expected, given under a certain circumstance, the actual max limit, etc. Just has an RPM on the badge.

It's a little bit frustrating that we have a good set of rules of thumb for DC forklift motors (I.E. Yes it's fine, any random one the correct size is fine, go ahead and use it), but not for AC forklift motors. However, the general construction of AC vs. DC motors makes me think it should be at least as good, if not superior. And, my limits are within what a DC motor could do.



> If you had more information (or really any solid information) about the motor performance as a function of speed and available voltage, I would suggest looking at this configuration to see if you will have workable or desirable levels of torque and power across your operating speed range. Without that it's kind of a gamble, but if it works out this is the most straightforward setup.


In the event that it's not... a few choices:

1 - Try to get another AC forklift motor. Not likely.

2 - Switch to DC, which for sure can handle 4000 rpm, and which I can probably find and salvage cheaply. Very likely. The Prius controller can apparently control DC just fine too, so, small software change there.

3 - Scrap the driveline for a motor and transaxle from something else. Likely, if I get driveable but disappointing performance and want something better in the future.


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## electro wrks (Mar 5, 2012)

One more small issue. I see you used some bed frame angle iron. Some of the frames, for some reason, are made of a high carbon steel. I guess for the extra strength? This is great for strength, but could make for brittle joints when welded and also might be difficult to drill and form. I've used plenty of the HC frame material on small, static, lightly loaded shelf units in my shop with no problems, so far. But, in typical vehicle structural use, I would stick with the common low carbon, mild steel whenever possible.

There is a simple grinding spark test to ID LC vs.HC steel, if you don't know it already.


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## brian_ (Feb 7, 2017)

MattsAwesomeStuff said:


> Rotor construction... likewise. I can't see that it would be built so flimsy as to actually fail anything close to the RPM that's listed on the nameplate. It doesn't actually say what that RPM is, expected, given under a certain circumstance, the actual max limit, etc. Just has an RPM on the badge..


I doubt that the rotor iron would fly apart at even five times the rated speed, but it has some sort of conductors, presumably a squirrel cage of copper bars... and I have no idea how well they are attached. Industrial motors are really intended to run only at the rated speed, because it is usually assumed that they are supplied with direct line power, so the frequency and thus synchronous speed is fixed (and the actual speed slips a bit below that); this one is a bit of a mystery.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

electro wrks said:


> One more small issue. I see you used some bed frame angle iron. Some of the frames, for some reason, are made of a high carbon steel. I guess for the extra strength?


I've heard they're made with whatever fell into the melting pot that day, and you'll find nodules of everything under the sun. High carbon, low carbon, whatever. Cheapest possible low-temp scrap melts. It's supposedly common to chip a drillbit off by finding a hard spot.



> This is great for strength, but could make for brittle joints when welded and also might be difficult to drill and form.


Good point.

The way I'm planning on using it is inside the transmission frame rails, sistering them, to help bridge a little bit of gap between orange and yellow cars, that I"ll be filling with weld. Maybe 1/8" gap total. I think it'll be fine in this case. At that point the frame rail is going to be 1/4" thick on a 1.25" box tube. Even if brittle, it should be okay.

I was also planning on using it for battery boxes and other miscellaneous bits and pieces, because I have lots of it.

Maybe I'll hold off fabbing an engine mount out of it though, and pony up for some normal structural stuff.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

Not an update, but, just something funny I came across today...

We all know those angry, hardcore, smug, evangelical EVers that make everyone in the room cringe when they act like they're better than everyone else.

Great little video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzAb8rVqDkY


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

Pre-Patching Primer Party!

Doesn't feel like a lot of work, but I think it's my last step before merging the two cars together.

Couple misc things first:

First up, had family coincidentally fly in to Arizona and New Mexico last week, where the remaining carcass of the yellow car still is. My mentor there spent some time cutting out the good rear passenger-side shock mount on the frame. The orange donor body had punched right through (and he had taken the time to temporarily patch it for me last time I was in town so it would still roll).










A different person, who bought the 3rd car from the estate where I got my 2, also had mentioned he had 4 hubcap centers that he thought were in slightly better condition than the ones on either of my cars, and a spare yellow tail light lens (I was missing one). Mine had no chrome left, rust eaten holes right through in some places, the new set he gave me polished up to a mirror finish with just the corner of my shirt. No longer embarrasing. And, he just gave them to me.









(white one is just lens flare, it looks the same as the others)

One guy was generous enough to drive all the way across town, meet the other at work, and then drop both sets of parts off at a hotel so they could be delivered to me later. Can't say kind enough things about either of these gentlemen often enough. I absolutely would have given up on my GT before I even got it home without their help, and they're still putting in effort for me from a couple thousand miles away. Great people.

...

Onto the priming party.

I broke apart the two car sections for maybe the last time to prime the joints (feel free to declare your ToldJaSos now, as I bask in my ignorance and hubris). It might not be a lie. Everything might go perfect.










Priming begins. Colormatching is coincidence, that's just the color of the chemical. Oddly, the can specifically says not for use on ferrous steels. Aluminum or galvanized steel only. I tried to look up why but found no reason not to use Zinc Chromate on steel.

I got this far before I realized, on some advice I should do the underside, and anything I'm not going to get around to painting later either so at least it's not bare metal. So I pulled the whole comparment out of the vehicle again.










Two coats. Last (maybe) look at the step-through frame car. Farewell convenience.










Funny how well matched the color of the primer is. I painted it and I can barely tell where it stops and the factor color starts. This is the underside of the trans tunnel, dash up top, seat rails at the mid.










I'm not a welder. I have at most a few hours behind the trigger.

I have the cheapest (and used) flux core welder money can't buy.

I was thinking last night, I have helped family and friends by welding things and fixing things and building things. I have volunteered. I have taught 30 or 40 people to begin welding. But I don't think I've welded on something for me in 7 years. Feels good.

In order to jam the two car sections together, because the pieces are so big they can't just move into place. They have to rotate into place. This means the trans rails had to be cut extra far to have room for the front end of the yellow car to swing through. That means there's a gap to fill.

It's ghetto and I know it's ghetto. It's angle iron from discarded bedframes. I cut it on a half-melted wood-cutting chop saw with an abrasive blade stuck in it. I tried welding inside the box a little, just because I could.










It's ugly, but hopefully it holds up. These box sections nest entirely into the engine comparment side of the trans rails, and then can be wiggled forward through the gap until they're also nested inside the trans tunnel section. Then if all's well, they'll get welded along their seams, welded to fill the gap, holes drilled and rosette welded on either side of the existing trans rails as well.

...

That's as far as I got. I think it's time to fit things as best I can one last time, and then assemble it all with self-tapping screws and start welding. There'll be a ton of cleanup from the horrible flux-core (and novice skills). I'm especially excited about upside-down welding the floor pans together under the car.

...

A few other tidbits:

- I own a key cutter. Me and another local with a GT put it to use making some spare keys tonight (they're double-sided, took a while for us to figure out how to abuse the jig to allow that). They key worked.

- I learned how to extract the lock tumbler and force it to fit a key so that the doors and ignition match (they used to, but my 2 were frankencars before I got them and don't have any door keys).

- Need to remove crumbled sound-deadening from inside the car? Cover it in bags of dry ice, then smack it with a hammer. It shatters and you sweep it off.

- Need to replace sound-deadening? For 10% the cost, use the stuff they use on roofs. Adhesive on one side and rubber on the other. About $40 will do the whole car. But it at any home store. "Peel and Seal" I think is one brand. A professional product like Dynamat for cars is outrageously expensive in comparison.


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## brian_ (Feb 7, 2017)

MattsAwesomeStuff said:


> - Need to remove crumbled sound-deadening from inside the car? Cover it in bags of dry ice, then smack it with a hammer. It shatters and you sweep it off.


One of the few advantages of our climate is that when I prepared our race car, and was stripping interior in winter, I found that most of the sound-deadening material broke up and came off when hammered... no dry ice required.  The idea is to flex the steel panel more than it would in normal use, beyond what the cold and brittle coating can handle.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

Shopping around junkyard inventory.

Finally a Prius came up at a scrapyard. Gen 1 (probably don't want the inverter, as there are only interface board projects for Gen 2 and Gen 3).

Also, conveniently, there's a Toyota MR2 (Electric power steering? What are the things I would need to extra from this to complete a power steering system?).

I'm not a car person. Suggestions on what kinds of things, while I'm under the Prius that I should be yanking out? I'm thinking, all the finishing-up things that I'm not really thinking about yet that I'll regret not grabbing.

Advice welcome.


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## Duncan (Dec 8, 2008)

Why do you want power steering?
You are building a lightweight sports car - no need for power steering or power brakes


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

> Why do you want power steering?


Parking garage, both ways, every day.

I don't need it for performance, I won't track it. I don't need it for highways, because I won't need it. But slow speed hard turns, ugh.


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## dtbaker (Jan 5, 2008)

MattsAwesomeStuff said:


> Parking garage, both ways, every day.
> 
> I don't need it for performance, I won't track it. I don't need it for highways, because I won't need it. But slow speed hard turns, ugh.


turns won't be hard with a small light car. use narrow tires, and with manual steering rack, it will turn fine as long as car is rolling. Many modern drivers crank the crap out of the front end by turning when the car isn't even moving.... very bad for front end and tires.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

Update: Speed Controller/Inverter.

I've picked up an inverter I'm hoping to use.

It's from a 2nd Gen Prius. Apparently the Toyota engineers made the things bulletproof. Every stupid and abusive thing you can do to them was anticipated and fails gracefully if it passes limits (usually thermal or overvoltage limits, so, it allows itself to be abused far above its spec until it actually reaches a limit that matters).

A 2nd Gen Prius (ending in 2009) was chosen because Damien has put a lot of effort into hijacking the brains of it, as a source of the cheapest (mine was $150 CAD and I expect I'm on the highest end) and most commonly available salvaged inverters available to DIYers. They're all hitting junkyards now and should be cheaper than buying components. There are functional test boards of the replacement brains that I can order blanks of from Damien.

No BOM or instructions or anything yet, but, I'm hoping I can be an encouraging non-EE average test-case situation for them.










Came with literally nothing other than the inverter itself. I asked what the hole was for and what used to go into it, and he (junkyard) said nothing. I said I wanted to look inside and make sure no snow got into it, he said no, it was indoors, and they never even opened it, there's a gasket on top that is expensive to replace.

Cracked it open when I got home:










Amazing how he got all those plugs apart without removing the top of the inverter. And how the case screws were only finger tight.

Seems in perfect shape but, yeah.

Pain in the ass, have to shop around for a wiring harness now. Shop said he'd sell me the cables for $30 next time he has a Gen 2 come in.

Good news is that this inverter has multiple functions inside it. It actually has two 3-phase motor controllers (you could link them and get 400hp to a motor), and a DC-DC converter that could be used as a battery charger too, so no need for a separate charger. 

...

In other news, starting to think about what I want to do with my instrument cluster and what I want that to look like. I'll be redoing some of the gauges and trying to keep the font and style the same. The original layout:










- Speedometer I would have to electro-mechanically simulate, (originally planned to keep the trans and not have to modify this, but, with no trans planned now I have to fake it). But I want to keep it the same (maybe change the graphic to have km/h too).

- Tachometer is useless since I'll be direct driving the torque tube. But a functional equivalent might be the amount of Amps I'm drawing from the main battery. Not sure how I'd replicate that, but I'm mostly set on that going there. Having a logarithmic scale would be neat too, since, anything but peak acceleration is going to leave the needle at effectively zero on a linear scale. Not sure if that's possible, but that's my ideal.

- Battery charge/discharge I will probably leave as-is. I'll still have a small lead-acid battery to run all the 12v systems. It'd be nice to confirm it's working and what my 12v load is and if the converter can keep up.

- Oil pressure I don't need and don't have ideas for. I'm not sure what I want there.

- Temperature sensor I'll try to rejig probably to motor/inverter/battery temp. Nice things to know. Maybe I'll adapt Oil Pressure to a second temp sensor

- Fuel gauge is hokey, I'd rather see a voltage read-out, which I probably will anyways somewhere. But, I happen to have a battery-to-fuel-gauge electronic converter gifted to me from another DIY EVer, so, if I can get that working I'll use it as a "fuel" gauge.

- Clock I was thinking I might convert into a backup camera screen. I'll hide a digital clock somewhere else on the panel. There's not much space for a screen and I'd like some kind of screen. Maybe I'll use the radio area below instead and have a whole nav/infotainment screen there.

- I love the rocker switches. I love how they're not buttons, and how I could hit them by feel, and how far they move. I actually have two instrument panels, so if I need extra switches for anything I have 6 more I can use.

...

Ideas about what other things I may want?


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## Duncan (Dec 8, 2008)

I got a lovely GPS speedo for about $70 - just feed it 12v and a feed for the backlight


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## piotrsko (Dec 9, 2007)

70 Opel kinda hoses you for the big gauges, they should be all mechanical. You might have to do something like Dakota, or build your own on a touchscreen or tablet. There's even apps for that. I use the oil light as the error light, big and in your face, shut down the system NOW kinda thing. I made the fuel and temp stuff work in the event someone else drives it. Hard to explain that when it says 165, you are out of battery (but then the oil light goes on). Fuel gauge then says empty but I see your point.

If you're feeling ambitious, you can slice off the back of the gauge can and put your own stuff inside.


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## brian_ (Feb 7, 2017)

MattsAwesomeStuff said:


> I asked what the hole was for and what used to go into it, and he (junkyard) said nothing. I said I wanted to look inside and make sure no snow got into it, he said no, it was indoors, and they never even opened it, there's a gasket on top that is expensive to replace.
> 
> Cracked it open when I got home:
> 
> ...


For orientation, I'll note that the logo label on top is oriented to be read when standing at the open hod, so the bottom of the logo is toward the front of the car, placing the protruding corner at the passenger side.

That D-shaped hole near the rear of the driver's side, and the oval hole at the passenger side rear corner, are presumably for the output cables, through grommets, and you have the oval one labeled as "M1/M2?". If this is right, they would have required cutting off the cables or removing the top, and since the cable stubs are not there my vote is the same as what you have assumed... the top was removed.

Looking inside, the three phase conductor terminals for one motor are in that protruding part. I wondered if it were possible that both sets of terminals were in the protruding corner, so the oval hole passes all six phase conductors, but this video shows only one set. The cables which connect to the white multi-pin connectors need to go through somewhere, perhaps the D-shaped hole... but then where is the other motor cable? It's probably in this video: High Voltage Hybrid Inverters and Converters. That's far too long for someone who doesn't even have a Prius inverter to watch, but I suspect that the second motor terminals are in the driver's side front corner, coming out the bottom.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

Minor parts and boring updates:

- Another Opel owner helped me discover that the key to my steering column matches the key those (yellow) doors. The mechanism is just gummy and he had to help it move. So, no need for locksmithing. Unlike many other old cars that had a separate door and ignition keys, Opels had a matching key (and a separate key and key type for the gas cap). I had 2 keys, one is half-way cracked through. Both work in the ignition, but the keys barely match up (really bad key copying attempt).

- 7 years ago I bought a key copying machine in a scrapyard. I never used it. I spent 2 hours digging through boxes until I found it. Opels have 2-sided keys and are polar (it matters which side is up). They key machine isn't designed for that and the keys themselves don't have an easy reference point to align the front profile with the rear, but we figured out a methodology. I gave the key machine to him since he's far more active in the Opel community than I am.

- Same Opel mentor helped me disassemble one of the rotating headlights, since mine weren't moving perfect, and because the 50-year old wiring is a must-replace fire hazard (rubber insulation crumbles and shorts). Watching him disassemble the headlight was like watching a marine field-strip a rifle, he knew exactly the process. How long would you figure it takes to disassemble a single headlight assembly with perfect knowledge? 5 minutes? Nope, 45 minutes. Would've taken me a week to figure it out. He recommended pulling the whole wiring harness anyway.

-Went over my welding plan with the same mentor, basically hoping he'd reassure me that my fitment issues weren't as bad as they seemed. He mostly concurred. The pieces don't fit together all at the same time, so we identified a process of what to anchor first (steering column which pulls a 1/2" gap in the firewall once the floorpan is settled), then progressively work through until all the fitment (windshield corners next) was lined up (floorpan/seats is last, smash 'em in place if I have to). I feel a lot better about firing up the welder finally.

- Pulled a Gen 1 (2001) Prius inverter from a junkyard. I'm not sure why. There's no open source projects to repurpose it and I can't design one myself. Pick N Pull doesn't even have a price sheet for it (they do not do EVs, this one slipped through on a bulk purchase). So the lady figured we could call it an "Electronic Ignition Module". $24. For that price, the caps and transistors have got to come in handy eventually on some project (induction furnace, welder, I dunno).










I busted 2 #40 Torx bits trying to take the wires out and eventually stripped the head, had to disassemble the wiring from the tranxaxle side. In the end I clamped a monster crescent wrench onto a bracket under the screw and got it to turn. Damned galvanic corrosion (Al vs. Fe).










- Figured I would need a smaller coolant pump, so I pulled the one from the Prius as well. They are famous for failing, and don't throw an error code unless the inverter overheats, which it won't do unless you're really pushing it. Passive circulation is sufficient. So I try to run it on 12v... appears to be shorted internally. So I still need a coolant pump. Hrmph.










- Set up an electric radiator space heater on a timer in the garage so that it clicks on a few hours before I get off work, so things aren't painfully cold to the touch when I get there. It clicks off when I get off work, so if I'm not in the shop that day (most days) to switch it to manual, it's not wasting power.


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## brian_ (Feb 7, 2017)

MattsAwesomeStuff said:


> ... Unlike many other old cars that had a separate door and ignition keys, Opels had a matching key (and a separate key and key type for the gas cap)...


I thought that only North American cars ever had that idiotic system with separate door and ignition keys. Although the Opel GT was a GM and sold at Buick dealers, it was European in every way, apparently including the keys. An old article suggests that the two-key stupidity (and one-sided keys) was common, but GM was just decades behind in switching; I'm old, but not old enough to remember antique keys for anything but GMs.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

Minor progress:

- Got the last of the front wiring harness out of the way for any upcoming welding. Bit of a sad state, a lot of it is quite stiff and I'm not sure I'd trust it, but I'm intimidated by the cost and work involved in completely redoing it. I'm somewhat considering at least replacing the 50-year-old relays with modern-ish automotive ones since I have some of those.










- Wondering what the Prius carcass at the junkyard might have for large contactors. Didn't see any, might have just had the one in the battery pack (already removed)?

- Went to vacuum out the air vents (body panels), forgot to turn the heater off. Popped a breaker at midnight and didn't feel like waking anyone up to go reset it.

- Ordered a circuitboard from EVBMW that'll allow me to hijack the Prius Gen2 controller. Discovered I also need some other parts, paid 5x the price to order them from Canada rather than China so that I can get them soon, not in 6 weeks. Put together an order for the electronic components to build the board.

- Started taking inventory of batteries. Two years ago I'd slowly processed ~2500 lithium 18650 cells from tool packs. Disassembled and capacity tested. I have about another 2500 to process and then it's end of the line (source dried up). It's about 250lbs (113 kg) of batteries total, of which maybe 2000 are worth using, and another 350 are usable but low capacity. The remainder I either ruined or were faulty.










Presuming that ratio holds up, I'll have around 4000 cells to use. 4000 * 3.7v nominal * ~2ah per cells = ~30kwh of energy. 

I'm guessing 250watt-hours per mile, so, ~120 miles range. About 4 milk crates of bulk, and a 400lb pack (before wiring, enclosures, etc). There's room for them there, but that's starting to be frighteningly heavy for the ass end of the Opel. Especially behind the rear tires where the gastank and spare was.

As much as possible I'll put below the parcel shelf, down into the frame under what would be the back seats if the Opel had those, but I'm estimating only 100lbs can go there. Maybe I'll have to put some up front too. I don't know how much the gas tank, spare, and exhaust weighed, but, can't be that much.

Total weight is also a bit of an issue. I deleted the engine (and hopefully won't need the trans), but I'm adding back 255lb of motor and, 50-ish lb inverter. Then 400lbs of battery. Certainly cutting it close. I have slightly heavier duty springs for the rear already, so that'll help.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

*Progress. First welds!:*

Against my better judgment, I'm going to share my first welds on a personal project in 7 years. It ain't pretty.

I haven't filmed everything, but I did throw together some sped-up clips of some of the work so far:

- Jacking the two frames apart for the first time since Phoenix when we levered them into place.
- Using the angle grinder back in the storage unit, run off a dead car battery, tripping the inverter if I pulled more than about an amp from it. Practically tickled the sheet metal apart.
- Using the wrong primer, poorly.
- Chopping and welding some bed rail to fill the gap in the transmission rail.
- Carrying half of one car through another car.
- Trying to at least ballpark fit up panels.
- First permanent weld.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3C7H-idrhwI
(Maybe later I'll put together a bit better video series on the build).

Welding excuses:
- It's been a long time.
- The best angles are usually given to the camera.
- I try to stay out of frame, so I can't actually see what I'm doing. I weld blindly at arms length and then check what I did after.
- It's like trying to write your name by holding a pencil from the eraser.
- To light the shot, I have so much glare behind me in the helmet that I can't see.
- Some parts are very thin sheet metal.
- I'm gap-filling awful fitment from desperate last-minute over-grinding back on inspection day (to give a hope of clearance to make it car-shaped).
- I'm using flux-core.
- I don't care that much.

First weld I burned through in 2 spots and had to build up material to fill.

There is no one way that the firewall lines up, it's deformed. So I had to decide on what to anchor first, and what to force into place later. M priority went:

1 - Steering column (heavier metal and easier to line up).
2 - Windshield edges (most critical fitment).
3 - Everything else.

Even then, I'm not quite happy with the driver's windshield fitment after, considering cutting the weld and moving a couple mm over. Also considering not caring anymore and just making it go together as-is. If I wasn't filming it I'd have my face close enough to see the weld puddle and what I was doing, in the future will probably sacrifice the camera.

Anyway, it's an ugly first step towards having a car-shaped car again, and probably one I'll redo, but, it's a step.


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## electro wrks (Mar 5, 2012)

When I first started welding and fab work, I use to whine about the difficult work like you're doing here. That was until I met and talked to people doing this kind of weld and fab work: https://tradesforcareers.com/underwater-welding-dangers/

After that, I just shut-up, studied, and practiced the skills needed over and over again until I became quite good at it. The skill along with other skills has taken me around the world, working on various projects (thankfully, none of it underwater welding!). When you get to the point where you stop complaining about the work and your tools and can appreciate the work that can be done, it can be very rewarding.

You might consider starting(or restarting your skills?) on smaller projects. Like designing and fabbing workbenches, tool stands, repairing and modifying tools, etc.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

> When you get to the point where you stop complaining about the work and your tools and can appreciate the work that can be done, it can be very rewarding.


1 - It's only the 2nd time I've ever done bodywork, and, the first time was just an easy panel swap.

2 - The cheapest flux core welder you can buy is the wrong tool for this job.

...

That said, a bunch of people have said this is nearly impossible to do with my current setup and experience, and, that's hasn't discouraged me. Don't mistake me documenting my kludging progress and explaining why it's challenging, as me claiming it can't be done. I'm literally doing it and unashamedly (well, somewhat ashamedly) moving forward regardless.

Me listing "excuses" openly is tongue-in-cheek admitting that this should be a lot better, while also explaining why it's not. If I ignored the camera and the backlights and wasn't welding gap-filling light-sheetmetal seams I literally can't see at 3am, it'd be a lot less screwy.



> You might consider starting(or restarting your skills?) on smaller projects. Like designing and fabbing workbenches, tool stands, repairing and modifying tools, etc.


If I was doing external or visible bodywork? Absolutely.

For something that'll be hidden by seam sealer, paint and carpet? This is great practice.

It's a $200 car that I'm building from free or nearly-free junk. The whole project is something I'll enjoy the process as much as the end result.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

Three things arrived in the mail today:










The Prius V2 board, the Blue Pill, and the ST-Link to program it. All purchased about the same time, one from overseas and the other two a day's drive away. Y'know, you try to support local, I paid like, 400% what they would cost from overseas, and the local shops took so long to get off their ass and ship the product they had no local advantage.

So, next up is to program the Blue Pill using the ST-Link, and hurry up and figure out what the missing pieces of my BOM are.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

Not much for progress. With some help I think I identified all the necessary components to order, including the main connector for the inverter (it's actually the same one the Leaf uses). Parts arrived (sort of... grr, more on that later), ~$75 + $50 for Damien's board + ~$25 for rushed local supplier of the Blue Pill and programmer.

Looks like I'll have a functioning controller (and charger, and DC-DC) for around $300 CAD ($225 USD). Less if I was more patient. That's more than I paid for the car, but, still a bargain I think.

Started soldering.

Kinda screwed up. Headers got a bit jammed, tried to take them out, ended up lifting a pad.









(bottom left, but also, top left)

I scraped the trace next to it, dobbed some solder on, and hoped that the pad that lifted with the header would somewhat reflow there when I redid the header.

The top left didn't seem to be an issue, I can't see any traces on the top side of the board that lead to it.

And then...










... goddamnit Digikey. I needed 13x 1uF ceramic caps. I ordered 20. Digikey shipped me 11. The package says 20. So, I can't even test it today.

Also, I haven't soldered in a few years. And I'm spoiled because I used to operate a solder wave machine (fountain that arches 8 tons of solder). Bit embarrassed by my soldering.










I have a minor excuse because I was filming, and soldering at arms length to not block the camera, and was too lazy to switch away from my heaviest spade tip, but, still, I should be able to solder by feel better than that.

Bit of a humbling experience. Before this I'd have thought I was fine to play around with SMT stuff, but, obviously not. Lifting traces, incomplete solders, etc. Glad this was a through-hole project.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

Been too long since an update.

Controller:

- I had a goal of getting my controller done (done-ish, motor spinning) in 2 months (got my Prius inverter Oct 30, so, end of the year). I'm close but didn't get there.

- There's a frustrating lack of documentation, as typical with Open Source projects. As typical, state of affairs was that you had to be capable of writing the project yourself in order to understand the project. I actually wrote a little on the philosophy of Open Source and how it's not fair or functional for the leaders in the community to have to do everything and that the rest of us have to step up and contribute too.

- In the 2 months I had to work on the controller, I only actually spent about 2 hours doing work. The rest was asking questions and waiting for replies from someone in the community. I don't know of anyone who's actually used the Prius controller before, except Damien on a test bench. I suspect no one with my knowledge level or lower has managed to make any progress. I've managed now, I think, to have a moderately complete roadmap, more or less by bribing the Open Inverter community with a promise to take their answers and write documentation that everyone can use so that I'll be the last person pestering them for details.

- The BOM had incomplete details to be useful to a non-EE. I got most of those answers.
- The pinouts were labelled, but not described as to what actually happens with them or what to do with them. Those are documented now.
- How to actually connect the control board to the Prius Inverter was completely undocumented. I drew an early sketch of what goes where.

- Johannes asked me to write stuff up into the wiki and created a new page for the project so: https://openinverter.org/wiki/Toyota_Prius_Gen2_Board -- That's, oh, 60% complete for content now.

- I made some bad presumptions about what was needed, so, I'm still ordering programmers and converters and interfaces and so on that I didn't know were necessary 2 months ago. The last of them arrives tomorrow. Hopefully a motor gets spinning soon.











Bodywork:

- By a mixture of clamps, floor jacks, self-tapping screws and prybars, I got the lower windshield arch lined up decently.

- An Opel GT friend borrowed my windshield to be a template for his (an aftermarket run that didn't get the shape quite right, needed sanding). He also cleaned up my grinder-spattered windshield respectably. It's borderline usable now. He also gave me some nested snippets of hose that they used as spacers to align his windshield. I checked them against my bodywork, the worst parts of the fitment are where top and bottom are continguous with the orange car, so, good enough.

- Tack welded one corner. Welded about 2" on the other corner and ground it afterwards. Ugly but passable.










- Removed the windshield washer pump (an actual bellows that you pump with your foot). 

- Finally figured out how to remove the brake booster and master cylinder. It's an odd arrangement, it's 2 feet forward on an extension because of space constraints. When I rebuild it I'll remove the extension and put it right behind the wheelwell I think. Don't know fi the booster works, and the fluid reservoir is rotted and crumbled apart.










- Engine bay is as empty as an engine bay could be. There's nothing left there. I'm now roughly where I wanted to be at the end of June last year. :/ Well, better than no progress.


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## dtbaker (Jan 5, 2008)

looks like you're making slow but decent progress on the mechanical... sorry you have been frustrated with the OEM controller/computer stuff. Those issues are exactly why I stuck with SIMPLE dc motor, controller, charger with series string of large format cells; really much more approachable for the average DIYer.

Keep up the good work!
There will be a growing pile of available parts from OEMs, and it's great that people like you are pulling apart the controllers so we might be able to re-use them in the future.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

dtbaker said:


> sorry you have been frustrated with the OEM controller/computer stuff.


I should be clear though... that I'm certainly not entitled to anyone's help. Anything anyone does on an open source project is more than the zero effort we'd have without their help.

Damien for example, reverse engineered the Prius Inverter then built an interface circuit, then designed a 4-layer circuit board, then wrote the BOM, then paid out of his own pocket to have a run of boards fabricated. I could do zero of those things, and those alone take the project to 90% completion.

But... I almost have to be able to do that 90% myself to figure out the last 10% without any extra help. So, even though it's incomplete and slow to have others fill in the blanks, it's not like I'm complaining. Just lamenting.



> Those issues are exactly why I stuck with SIMPLE dc motor, controller, charger with series string of large format cells; really much more approachable for the average DIYer.


I asked my forklift guy if there was a drive motor I could buy. He said no, but he'll set a machine aside for me when there's one being scrapped and I can have it for free, same as last time.

I got there and it was an AC machine. I asked if he had any DC machines, he said nope.

And that's the story of how I ended up building an AC drive.

I took the controller, but, the guys at the the inverter company laugh-noped when I asked to repurpose it. It's proprietary and they don't even have the final code, they set up a framework for each manufacturer to complete in the way that makes sense to them, and it's tens of thousands to even have access to that, let alone the unfinished last mile.

A year ago Damien had already done most of the work on the Prius control board, and pointing out how it also had a DC/DC converter built in that could be repurposed as a charger. So, that's what I figured I'd pursue.

Without re-using the Prius, it's more like $1000 to build Johannes' inverter from parts. Which probably doubles the budget for my "cheap fun project" vehicle.

So, the project would've been dead in the water without both Damien and Johannes's hard work (Damien's control board takes advantage of the software Johannes wrote).


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

*Today is my 1 year Opelversary.*

A year ago today, I spotted a cute-looking corvette-like car covered in snow in an outdoor car lot while buying used winter tires, and took a picture of it through a chainlink fence.

Not being a car person in the slightest, I had no idea what it was. Looked through the seller's other listings and found out it was called an Opel GT. I ended up coming here and asking about how to tell a good donor from a bad one.

It sold before I could take a closer look at it, but that conversation led to being told about a guy trying to sell 3 of them in Phoenix, especially suitable to me because they were being sold for not much more than sheet metal, already half disassembled, and without the rust I would find on anything in Canada at my budget. 4 months later I ended up buying 2 of them and a bunch of parts, and made the 3000 mile round trip to pick them up, including 4 days spent gutting and chopping them in another Opeler's back yard and my first ride in a GT courtesy of a third Opeler.

And here we are 8 months after that with me still doing a job I figured would take me 4 hours because I didn't know the difference between a cowl and a footwell. 

But don't worry, I knew that was the hard part, the easy part is the electronics which I have made equal progress spending money on with equally small results. Speaking of which...

...

With some help from a local Opeler:
- Headlight lever finally removed by destroying it. Previous owner glued the plastic on. Cheap replacement no problem.
- Center console removed for the first time, no longer trapped by the lever.
- E-brake lever removed.

There's not a lot left to take apart. Pretty soon the only things left for me to do is put things back together. Supposedly these things can be used for transportation, not just holding the garage floor down.

Next... final plan for welding the two cars together...

I've been mostly talked out of my earlier position of "Extra sheet metal is better" and instead into "minimize the amount of overlap". My original thinking was that if I doubled up the seat rails they'd be extra strong which is good for rust-prone cars to have extra metal. But, especially in Canada, between two sheets of metal is just a place for water to get trapped and rust (or freeze, rip, then rust) both of them. Also, the orange car was never in need of repair. It's sections are missing because the previous owner cut them away purposefully, it doesn't need strengthening.

So, even more of the original car is going under the knife:










I'll be slitting along the top of the yellow seat rail, so that the parts aren't trying to nest like two cups stacking, leaving airgap. And, I'll just be chopping off the extra seat rails that extend to the rockers.

However, that outside yellow rail cupping against the orange rail is my only reference point. The insides of the orange rails have been removed:










In retrospect, had I left the orange rails intact and just cut the yellow right at the edge of them, that would have been best. Let's review!

I did this to it last summer:










I cut up both the intact orange and intact yellow seat rails, so that they'd stack like cups.

Which... is okay. Because I was originally quite worried about not knowing how to align and reference the seats. What I can still do now is:

1 - cup them one last time
2 - screw them together with sheet metal screws
3 - take the screws back out
4 - chop apart my reference points
5 - use the screw holes to re-align them before welding.

One side effect of having using the top of the trans tunnel as a prying surface to shove the two cars together over and over, is that I think the trans tunnel has... sucked in it's gut so to speak. The yellow seat rails are narrower than the orange ones. Stretching them back out to fit both sides at the same time was a bit of a challenge. Even getting the driver's side rail to land squarely was a challenge. Ratchet strap and some clamps worked:










That held one side steady, but the other side was now 1/2" off. I used a tire jack inside the trans tunnel to expand it, then affixed it all by putting the hinge bolts into the seat rails.

But I've now hit a bit of a problem. I don't know what angle the seat rails should be, nor the floorpan:










I've obviously stepped on the edges of both unsupported floorpans a hundred times, and pried them downwards to fit the firewall/trans tunnel through. I'll put a floor jack on the ground to lift the pan wherever it needs to be, but, whatever angle it's welded at is the angle it'll be forever (metal doesn't stretch well).

So, waiting to hear back from some other Opelers.

1 - the width-wise seat rail (across your lap)... should it be level? If not, what angle?

2 - The floorpan itself, maybe at various places, should it be level? Does it slope towards the rockers where the drain holes are? Does it make any funny bows or dips or other shapes?

... Once I know that I can start chopping and welding. Might need to borrow/buy a transmission cross-member too, neither of my cars ever had one, I'll probably need one for my motor anyway, and I want to make sure the rail spacing is correct before I commit it.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

As to the angles of the seat rails and floorpan..

I forgot, I already have the answer to this.

The front seat rail makes sense to be level. It could be any height. You can't sit diagonally or it'd hurt your back to drive. And, why would they have a seat that had to be built diagonally if they could choose any angle? They would just choose to be level. So, those are level.

They do drain towards the outside too. If the seat rail is level, then all you have to do is look at how square the bottom is to the top, to know what angle the floor runs at (because the floor runs at the angle of the bottom of the seat rail).

Answer:










It's a weird cross sectional area.

Also, if the front seat rail is level, and the floor was level (it's not), then side seat rails would be the same height. They're not. The inside is barely 1/4" deep at the back, 1" at the front, and close to 2" towards the rockers.

Problem solved.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

Part of why I've only been working on the GT one day a month is because it takes me forever to make decisions. Especially co-dependent decisions. I hem and haw, and I have to build mental momentum where I understand what I want to do. I have to juggle as much of the details as I can in my head. When I get to the garage at 9pm, and can only grind for maybe 30 minutes, I'm never ready, so I get roadblocked by not being able to grind, and not being able to proceed and figure out the next thing without even exploratory grinding.

I hate tackling things piecemeal. I like to binge-work on projects. When I start working, it's normal for me to not eat or sleep for the first day or two and just work day and night. Having the habit of going to the shop and only wasting an hour catching up to yesterday's momentum has been working great. Got more done this week than I have since the summer combined.

Yesterday night, did a bunch of chopping. It was easy, still had mental momentum so I just showed up and grabbed the grinder.










Hit a snag, and maybe why panels weren't nesting well before. The floorpan gutters/strengthening grooves need to nest, but on the lower pan (orange) it still had the edge of the trans tunnel welded to it. No room to get a grinder between them anymore, tin snips to the rescue.










You know when you try to order one perfect pizza for multiple people, then just give up and order everyone their own?

Combining suggestions from everyone I'm rosette welding and seam welding. It's a lot of time and definitely overkill for the seats (good practice for firewall), but "solve a problem" time moves at 2% the speed of "just do the work" time. I don't think I'm exaggerating, a lot of work to do with no decisions to be made is 50x faster than having to figure something out. 










Another roadblock, the '70 (yellow) and the '73 (? orange) seem to have different seat rail heights for the longitudinal rails. The back end (where the rear seat bolts is) is tight, but the front has 1/4" gap. Back a few month ago when I documented this I figured I just had metal blocking the path so they wouldn't nest. But even with the metal gone, there's still 1/4" difference.










You could shove a pencil between the overlapping seat rails. I don't think they're bent, they're actually different vertical heights for the rails. Maybe.










My solution was to drill an excessive amount of screw holes (what's a little more welding?), bash it with a hammer as I go, and stop caring because none of it is critical. It'll be plenty strong. All 4 seat bolts are the same height, it's just in between them where the rails aren't the same height. Doesn't matter.










Chopped as planned and a few sheet metal screws to start anchoring it.










The passenger side has two rows of rosette holes. That's because the driver's side I got lazy and cut the orange straight through the seat rail and the floorpan last fall. Don't care, won't matter. Moving on.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

Time to check is the seat rails are level.

On one hand, I have to consider that the orange rail has sagged.

On the other hand, I have to consider that I have doubled-up sheet metal from where the two panels will still be nesting.

These errors work in opposite directions.

Hmm...










Errors cancel each other. Moving on.

One of the first things pointed out to me last summer was that even between the two cars, I didn't have a complete floor pan. The passenger footwell had holes in both. No problem, I saved all the old cutoffs to patch with, thinking I'd be laying a 6"x12" patch piece.

Came across once piece... oh wow... it's just about a perfect match!










What are the odds?!

Oh wait, damnit, it has rust holes in the patch piece right where I need to use it.

... wait a minute...

This is literally the scrap piece I cut out of this section several months ago, because it was rusted.

I've been embracing the "minimal overlap" mantra, and went about snipping and trimming floorpan (by hand, it was 3am) until it was only 1/4" overlapped. What I imagined would be that 6"x12" patch ended up more like 6"x1".

It's hardly even a patch. By the time I'm done welding you wouldn't be able to tell I re-used the floorpan. I could've used a soup can.










Spent some time underneath to check the fit with the transmission crossmember. I'd hoped the holes would line up and tell me if I was off.

Turns out the holes are oval so they tell me nothing. (Actually, looked maybe 1/4" too wide).

The back of the transmission tunnel was definitely 1/4" too narrow, I could tell by the corners of the seat rails not matching, but 2 feet away the transmission hole was 1/4" off in the other direction, too wide. Obviously a result of how 3 of us jacked, levered, and shoved the two bodies together to tell a happy tale to the DMV last summer. We used a jack under on the cowl to lift it up (bent up and inward, sucked in the sides), I used a massive prybar at the back end (bent up and inward also), sat on the back "seat" and put my legs on the seat rails to shove it all forward as hard as I could so the footwells would clear (splayed the footwells down and wide).

My attempt at fixing it was to use a bottle jack sideways against the transmission rails near the transmission to keep it wide enough to stretch the back end first. No dice. So I wedged a tire jack into the back of the trans tunnel to try to widen it directly. But the tunnel has nothing for rails at that point and it's shaped like a triangle so the jack would just push itself down and out as I tightened. So I used a floor jack and a 2x4 to force the screw jack to stay still. 3 jacks at the same time.

But tightening the screw jack just lifted the trans tunnel up, rather than expand it outwards.

So I cut off the last 2" of the seat rails where it was bothering me that you could see they didn't line up.

...

The rest of the night was spent trimming floorpan, drilling holes, breaking drillbits and screwing floor panels together.

I know this looks like the same image I've posted 3 times this week but it's 3 hours extra work from the last one:










... minor milestone. It's not welded yet, but the car doesn't feel like a pile of junk anymore.

With the trans tunnel missing everything has always squeaked and groaned and it moved when I stepped on it and I had to be careful where I put my weight. With 50 screws in it it, it feels like it's one piece again. I can just lean or step on it and it doesn't flex out of the way. Something neither of my GTs ever felt like with how much interior damage they both had. It's actually feeling like there's something that can be a car, not just a garage full of sheet metal.

Speaking of junk...










That is a factory weld on my GT.

Rear of the trans tunnel, right before the cross member behind the seats, passenger side. It was under all the seam sealer and sound absorber stuff.

Someone got *paid* to weld that so poorly. Suddenly I don't feel so bad about my lack of welding skills anymore (which we're about to see demonstrated fully).


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

Speed Controller Update:

Since blowing up one microcontroller or both around Christmas time, I ordered a new one of each.

One of them arrived with a solder splash all of over it. Asked for another new one, got a replacement. Waited for it to arrive.

Ripped apart the board and put the new Blue Pill in. Ran through all the same routine of progressively connecting and programming it and the D1.

Doesn't work. There's this fancy webpage interface that's supposed to show me all the dozens of inverter parameters live updated and for me to tweak and configure to my motor. The interface loads, but none of the parameters. So the two controllers aren't talking to each other.

Doesn't work, and I can't tell why it doesn't work, and I can't figure out at what point what doesn't work.

Another 3 weeks of asking questions, but there's not much specific to tell me. Maybe no one has actually tried this combination of hardware before. I knew I was among the first, and some guys just used alternative hardware for pieces of stuff that they already had laying around.

Arber, who wrote the tutorial to bridge between the developer and guys like me, goes to see if his tutorial works for the first time and runs into the same dead end as I do. Controllers won't talk to each other. He's stumped. (spoiler, tangent, he had a separate issue, unrelated).

Kiwifiat says he'll order one of each and let us know when they arrive.

Two weeks later they arrive and he hooks them up. He gets them working just fine no hassles. He asks me a few questions. Really basic. Is the device on? Does the LED have a heartbeat so you know it's doing something? How are you connecting power? What can you see?

I tell him LED is on solid any time it's powered, so I know it's not fried. Is that the "heartbeat"?

Apparently, it's not supposed to be. It should be blinking if things are working. THat's not written down anywhere.

It conclusively means that the controller isn't flashed. It's suggested I try re-flashing it.

I reflash it. Flashing process reports success, same as last time. Says it flashed successfully, no errors. But doesn't work. I post a log.










Johannes asks me to scroll up and post the log of what happened earlier when I flashed it with the loader file.

I ask what loader file?

Apparently there's a loader file. You have to flash the Blue Pill with the loader file first, then flash it with the software second.

This isn't written anywhere. The (3rd party) video tutorials they linked showing how to program the Blue Pill don't show it or mention it. They just show using one file. One file is apparently common enough, but for some special reason, this project has a 2-step process.

There was one reference to "loader and programming file" earlier in a process, but no links to either, so I had to dig into a thread to find the programming file 2 months ago.

"loader and programming" seemed to me like a combined thing. Apparently "loader file and programming file" is what was meant.

The file I found 2 months ago? Correct file. That was in the programming directory.

The loader file? Oh it's not part of what was updated that day, not mentioned by anything in that thread, since it hasn't changed in a while no need to mention it.

Okay, back into the directory... I still only see the programming file, no loader file. I didn't miss it, or neglect to inquire what that extra file was for, it's just not there.

Oh, that's because that directory is only for the programming files, not the loader files. You have to go to a different directory to find the loader files. It's not linked to or mentioned in the programming parts.

This all makes perfect sense from the developer's side. Everything is nice and neat and ordinary. But from the amateur's side trying to follow directions, there are gaps.

...

So it took 5 seconds and my inverter hardware is blinking and the web interface live updates all my inverter paramenters and lets me change them now.


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## electro wrks (Mar 5, 2012)

Did you try the self-drilling, self tapping TEK (type screws) to hold your body pieces together? The hex headed ones are the easiest to work with. Great work and patience with the replacement controller board. If you ever get it to the final working stage, you should do a clear and complete(one with a lot better information than you were given) post(s) of the steps required to get there.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

> Did you try the self-drilling, self tapping TEK (type screws) to hold your body pieces together?


Yes. Used about a hundred so far.

Same video I posted earlier, timestamped...

https://youtu.be/3C7H-idrhwI?t=396

Sometimes they're nice, sometimes they're not.



> If you ever get it to the final working stage, you should do a clear and complete(one with a lot better information than you were given) post(s) of the steps required to get there.


I would, if for no reason other than so Damien can sell the rest of his Gen2 boards.

But... beyond that there's basically no point.

I bought a control board in a narrow slice of time when things were being built that way.

Damien (and Johannes) have switched to JLPCB, which is so much cheaper than their previous supplier, that buying SMT boards pre-placed and soldered is about the same cost as buying components and building them yourself. 

So, this last week or two Damien re-engineered just about every single board that he sells to use JLPCB's component inventory.

It looks like using the Blue Pill and through-hole components is a dead tangent that won't see any more development. So, no need to learn or teach anyone any of this. It's all integrated directly into the new ones he makes.

Also, not sure what the future of Gen2 prius inverters is, as Gen3 has seen 4 or 5 guys all kinda pitching in to help Damien on little things, where, I'm the only one I've seen so far using the Gen2. The Gen3 control board Damien designed is actually a direct swap-out for the one in the inverter itself. He designed it around the same form factor. Also, there's onboard hardware to repurpose the MG1 inverter as a batter charger (just waiting on software).

I've been saying for a while, looks like I picked the wrong horse. Which is fine. I should still get it working and temporarily moveable, and, I'm only out of pocket $300 or so for the board and components. If I upgrade to Gen3 because that's where the community's development efforts are, that's an acceptable tradeoff to me. Heck, that's less than a charger would cost me to build.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

Productive-ish two weeks of bodywork. Four steps forward, three steps back. Frustrating, but, inching progress. Probably spent more time on the car than I have combined since I left Phoenix.

First up, a terrible choice to start on, the cowl seam next to the VIN plate. I had tried drilling holes to rosette weld, but, I lacked a way to clamp the metal underneath. Even my long welding clamps didn't reach or wouldn't fit. So, in the end there was no point to the rosettes, most of them were just holes I had to hover and fill. I both burned through and left holes. Gave up and coming back to it later with more practice since it's a cosmetic area.










I figured a good place to practice would be the seat rails, since they've got 3 seams, double the metal, aren't really that structural, and will be hidden under the seats.

First up, driver's side:










So, this has become my method:

1 - Tack a few places with the 2-setting welder on "Low", then tack as much as I can just to build up thickness.

2 - Try to run a bead (I've stopped doing this). Run 1/4"-long diagonal beads, pause 2 seconds, run another one next to it when it's partially but not fully cool.

3 - Sometimes, flick the welder to "High" and try to run a bead through all of that to re-melt it and fill inevitable voids.

4 - Grind it flush.

5 - Find all the places there was too much material to melt and it left gaps. Also find pinholes. Fill them.

6 - Grind again.

7 - Repeat grind/weld cycle 3 times before most of the holes are covered.


Moving on, passenger's side. This one also has rosette welds to try.










A tangent on this one...

When I was welding the rosettes behind the rear seat bolt, the metal... changed. Hard to describe. It was like it wasn't steel anymore. It looks like I welded across the whole surface, but I didn't, just the rosettes. It was matte grey and clay-like. When I ground it, same deal, was not like steel anymore, soft and gummy. It's right through the base metal. The base got hot, but, not that hot.




























Anyone familiar with that?

Could be all the lead paint alloying with steel?

Could be all the zinc and chromium from the zinc chromate?

... end tangent. It doesn't matter and I'm not fixing it, was just curious.

...

Next up I wanted to experiment with a vertical weld, so I picked the driver's footwell, under the cowl. I remember hastily and angrily cutting this at Doug's place, knowing there was no extra overlapped material as usual, because I was running out of time and worried about how I was going to make the two body sections nest together for the inspection.

I just ran the grinder vertically downwards, lined up with where the wiring harness sprouts from the footwell on the top portion.

Except, despite lining up perfectly in the transverse direction, there was this whole extra triangle section missing in the longitudinal direction. I couldn't figure out what I did. Had I bent it? Had that panel gone sideways for that triangle and I had cut it?

These are great questions for someone who cares what the panel up behind the dash looks like. Instead I got tired of trying to figure it out and used the 3rd biggest hammer I own. Done.










My smashing job didn't result in a great fit. Especially where the metal changed directions. So screwed a 1/2" strip of sheet metal to fill the little gap left.










I chose... poorly.

I tried welding from inside the car, at arms-length (can't fit into the area to see better). It added some material but, I could not get it to fill.

So then I welded on the other side, in the engine bay. It just kept feeling like there was more to weld. I welded down the middle. I welded at the edges of the filler piece. I added so many puddles that dripped and ran down the metal that I turned the welder to "High" and tried to fuse back down to flat.

By the time I was done it looked like I'd stapled a crocodile to the metal. There's probably a half pound of wire in there, and STILL holes everywhere.










Then I tried to clean it up and grind it back to a reasonable thickness. Went through almost a whole grinder wheel until my hands were numb. Took off way too much material and exposed some holes. Dozens of holes. Ugh.










Vertical welding sheet metal in a place that I can't reach or see much of what I'm doing is difficult. I gave up for now and moved onto the floor pans.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

Oh, and I upgraded my welder by adding a 150A FWB rectifier, so it's at least DC now instead of AC. Seems to have predictably cut down on the spatter.










This actually went pretty well. Slow, but, measurable progress with no unknowns.

What's odd is that the welds look much worse than they are. When welding, I can control the puddle well, nice and smooth, steady, it goes where I want it to, and it fuses the metal together. But the metal I'm adding doesn't follow the puddle. It wanders and drifts off up to 3/8" away as it cools, usually towards the nearest other glob. Hence the crocodile look to it. It's almost like I'm TIG welding, the base metal is fused, but I'm adding globs randomly to the surface like I'm using a hot glue gun. This isn't a problem, since I don't actually need extra material and am removing it later, I just need the puddle to fuse the metals, but, it looks bad.

I didn't rosette weld since the overlap was so narrow most places. I just followed my procedure from the seat rails, and then went to run a bead underneath.










Welding upside-down was, as expected, even harder than vertical.

There's no forgiveness. If you overheat an area, it will drip. If it drips, you cannot just weld hotter overtop the same area like you can from top-down. Any attempt to fix it just makes it drip more. You have to stop and grind it.

Also, I don't have room for my welding mask and the creeper, so I'm worming along the floor. And, welding off to the side. But not enough to the side to have room for my shoulders to to be sideways. Between that and trying to apply pressure upside down with a grinder (having to lift my arm and the grinder, rather than using those weights to do the grinding for me), it's fairly exhausting. I have to stop every few inches.

Also, I note underneath there is no seam sealer, which I can't imagine my welds not needing. I wonder if it doesn't hold up to direct contact.










On that note, the reason many of these photos are taken after welding and not after finishing, is because I can only run a grinder for the first 30 minutes or so that I'm in the shop. Otherwise I feel it's too late at night.

So when I get to the shop after work, I try to remember all the things I wanted to grind the previous day and run the gauntlet before it's too late.

This is the most frustrating part of the process because, with a flux-core welder being so poorly suited to sheet metal, it will often take 3-6 attempts at a seam before I caught all the screwups. And, I can't alternate weld/grind/weld/grind/weld/grind, I have to do all my grinding at the start. So it's become that progress has slowed to a stop because I'm bottlenecked on grinding. And I'm getting nothing done and I only get one chance per day at fixing a mistake. I'd very much rather "Oh well, grind it flat, try again" back and forth without having to change positions and jigging, and get one area finished and feel good about completion, versus having to juggle all my mistakes across the whole car every day, trying to re-establish the position and jigging, and never get anything done.

I've been at the shop every night for the last 2 weeks, and I get done maybe 1 foot of welding done per night by the time I figure out how to get access and set everything up and do 2 or 3 passes after fixing yesterday's mistakes. Over half my time is moving stuff around rather than just getting work done.

Here's a shot of the floorpan, welded from both above and below. Haven't had time to grind yet. I think the upsidedown stuff is decent, I'm clearly getting penetration through to the top side, stopping just before burnthrough most of the time.










More frustration. Sometimes, even waiting 5 seconds between the shortest possible tacks, a burnthrough results in "pushing" the pinhole an inch or two before it even starts to close. I've resorted to just holding the trigger and clanging around the hole like you'd call farmer's for lunch on a triangle. Eventually all the edges are thick enough to actually hold a tack and start to close. Then it has to be all ground then probably welded again once or twice again later.










Trying to be persistent but it doesn't feel like progress anymore.

Last bit of welding I've done is some of the underside of the driver seat rail. This is the side that didn't have room for rosette welds.










Had some time to reflect on, if I was doing it all over, what I'd do differently, but, this is enough blah for a day.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

The reason I haven't posted any updates isn't because I haven't been working on the car. I've actually been working on it almost every spare night for 2 months since my last update, and given a choice between documenting and working, I've been working.

Also, because I can only grind at the start of the night, not when I'm done, all my pictures are of ugly welds rather than what I clean them up to be when I run the grinder again. So I kept putting things off until after I'd grinded.

Bodywork Update:

- Welded underside of passenger seat rail. First pass anyway. And there's a 4" triangle that starts on the right that I need to patch under the seat rail where I over-trimmed.










- Welded first pass on driver's side cowl. Came out a lot better than the passenger side because the opening into the cowl is 1/8" away and it could be clamped tight (passenger side has the vin plate and isn't accessible for at least 10", I don't have clamps long enough). I later cleaned it up and grind it smooth and no second pass was needed.










- Next up, a 13 hour work binge to mostly finish the biggest gap, the back of the trans tunnel where it means the parcel shelf box frame. There's a 1" gap because I had to cut extra to angle the whole yellow trans tunnel/firewall/cowl section into the orange body. It's also beat up from being pried on by 3 men. 










It's actually 3 layers of metal: 

1 - The square-ish top of the trans tunnel. 

2 - The round underside where the driveshaft passes, and

3 - A second hovering rounded shell of heavier gauge sheet that reaches from the diff to just inside the trans rail, perhaps to protect from torque tube failing and puncturing through the car.

The handbrake lever cavity is formed between layers 1 and 2.

Also, either the previous owner when removing the trans tunnel, or me, trimming it flush, left the edge of the floorpan loose from the parcel shelf box, so that had to be welded first.

Here's the underside:










And welded, poorly...










Naturally I don't bother to straighten the trans tunnel floor *before* I shove the trans tunnel in place and weld the seat rails. So then I had to straighten sheet metal from a gap I couldn't even reach pliers into. I ended up cutting a 2x4 into an arch, propping it against the underside with a jack, and using the 2x4 as an anvil. A ratchet extension as a punch and I mostly flattened out the bottom sheet.

- Next up, I wanted the back of the trans tunnel to be strong because I knew I had no way to rejoin the middle layer of sheet metal. I could weld the bottom and the top but not the inside. I cut up some bedframe angle iron, chopped it in half, hooked the pieces in from the middle of the underside, then lifted them together and tacked them into place. This took like 8 tries because there's no way to hold them and they kept slipping on me and falling back to the floor after I'd already crawled out from underneath, but, persistence worked. Slagged the back rail and filled the rosettes on top.

- Gap-filled in 5 pieces. The lower part of the arches on either side, the underside of the top, and then top of the arches on the side. The difference in the gap between the bottom (round) sheet metal and the top (square) I just filled with probably a pound of weld about half way up until they got too far apart to make that sensible. I figured by the time I tried to weld a 3/4" wide strip 4" tall, with only 1/4" gap, I'd just up with so many holes I might as well fill it solid anyways. So I did. The only patches were on the top 1/3 where the square sheet starts to really rise above the lower arch.



















"Done", after some grinding:










And the underside, and I also connected the last 8" on either side to connect to the seat rails, which means the underside sheet metal is "done", at least a first pass:










Around this time I noticed the floorboards had rusted through in what I thought were "good" original Orange-car areas. Tried to patch and still left holes. I've wirebrushed and spritzed with Evaporust every day for a couple weeks and it looks like those are the worst of them, so maybe just fill them rather than patch the whole panel.










My big push for that month was to finish the seam at the back of the trans tunnel so that I could bolt the torque tube on and have some choices as to what I wanted to work on if I burned out. I.E. Instead of endless bodywork, with the torque tube attached and no worries about welding near it, I could start to plan the electrical driveline for variety if nothing else.

For what it's worth, I've never actually seen either of my vehicles with a driveline hooked up. The only driveline items the orange car came with ended at the diff, and the yellow car ended at the torque tube plus a loose engine. Neither had a trans or driveshaft, though there was a driveshaft in the parts pile.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

--Intermission--

Boring story, skip it to stick with the car stuff.

A friend sold his GT rotisserie to a gentleman who will end up not needing it until the summer, so, he offered to let me be borrow it short-term on a kind of "get my ass in gear" basis until then.

This, naturally, after I'd just completed all the cramped upsidedown welding from underneath the car. ("all, mhm", sneers future me I'm sure).

The rotisserie takes up 2' behind and 2' in front of the car, and I thought it'd be a bit tight, plus it requires welding up support inside the vehicle. So I opted to borrow just his body dolly instead.

Philosophy tangent:

When I was a kid, sometimes I'd watch TV shows with my dad or see magazines with "simple" little projects. Simple projects that required thousands of dollars of woodworking equipment or whatnot. I was too young to realize that, like how modern music videos are only funded by cell phone product placement the pop star is waving around while they dance, that the focus of these shows weren't really to show you how easy it was to make things, they were there to make you feel like even easy projects required expensive sponsored tools.

I didn't want to spend a lot of money on my vehicle. I started a business in a local recession a few years ago, and while I could, it's not smart for me to spend on anything that's not paying off debt. I don't work hard, but I work long hours, 7 days a week. I know that cars aren't cheap like bikes and other small projects and I wanted something to work on... but it was mostly a "have something to look forward to" project than a "spend money on a luxury" purchase. And if it's something actually fun to drive but pays for itself by saving me on gas, it doesn't seem like I'm treating myself before I've earned it.

In that spirit, I'm building a car functionally from garbage, somewhat to complete my trilogy of electric bicycle and electric motorbike from garbage projects/tutorials. And because I don't have a garage, there's extra pressure to actually complete a car project. The cars were sold to me for maybe double the value of scrap metal. The batteries I got by intercepting the waste stream from a tool company. The motor I got by intercepting the waste stream from a forklift repair shop. The controller from a junk car. The biggest expense is likely the ~$1000 in gas it cost me to bring them back from Arizona (excuse for a vacation anyway, got to see the Grand Canyon alone with no tourists for a whole day).

Anyway, what I'm getting around to is that, the body dolly feels like cheating. Even more so does a rotisserie. It should really be the first thing anyone spends money on during a restoration. If I'm giving advice, it's to start with that, first step.

And, I'm well aware that my crappy $40 flux-core welder is the worst possible choice for welding thin sheet metal and I should've just bought (or built) a MIG. I even have a bottle.

But... one of the things that I like about my project is that I've basically been able to do it all with about $100 of shitty tools (I dunno, maybe $200). I'm cheap but I'm not that cheap, I'd blow $1000 on tools if I felt like adding some. But I remember what it was like to be the kid that thought that building stuff was for "other people" because none of it seemed possible with tools we already had in the garage. I do like demonstrating that there do not have to be high barriers to entry for a hobby.

And, sometimes, you learn the most when being determined to make the less-optimum tool for the job have to do the job. I wouldn't do it again, but I'm okay with having done it once.

When I finish a project people often ask, almost defeatestly, about what kinds of tools I had to have to make it. They're saying without saying "I'd love to do that but I don't have the space/budget/whatever, you're spoiled."

And you always get more experienced people who act like the bare minimum to get into a hobby is all the gear they've accumulated after 20 years at it on a professional level as if everyone curious wants to commit to that, and that anything less will "never work".

You need a $2000 welder to build a gokart.

You need a $250 multimeter and a $1000 oscilloscope to start with electronics.

Etc.

Anyway, no point in being pedantic. The body dolly is amazing.

For weeks, I couldn't even use the creeper under the car because with the jack stacks maxed out: Creeper, Me, Welding Helmet, pick 2 of those 3 there's room for. So every weld I'd be laying on the cold (Canadian) concrete floor, bucking and shimmying 2" at a time, all the way under all the way back. Welding upside down with my unsupported head back and arms stretched horizontally. Every time I forgot a tool, needed to adjust a lamp, needed to piss, wanted to take a picture, cramped up, or even just wanted to turn and face a different direction (my shoulders are wider than the car was off the ground), was an excuse to just quit for the night rather than crawl all the way out and all the way back under. And there's never room to get out from beside the car either.

Lit my beard on fire thrice from rebounding sparks. Lit my hair on fire when the bandana slipped off. Ugh.

For anyone who doesn't own a body dolly or rotisserie, especially for body work, I can't emphasize enough how huge of a difference it makes:

- The night it was installed, I yanked out the rear assembly and sat cross legged where the diff used to be.

- When I want to work beside the car, I can shove it sideways.

- Any time I'm under the car, I'm comfortably on the creeper. And I can roll and switch which direction I'm facing.

- Any time I need to move under the car, the dolly's framework is like monkey bars, one hand can spin or move you anywhere you want to be. You can brace your arm, or tools, or rig clamps off of it.

- Whatever the perfect height to work is, up or down it goes.

- Any time I'm leaning over or crawling into the engine bay? The car has a scaffolding around it that fits my steeltoes.

- Want to film what you're doing? There's distance between ground and car to frame the shot properly.

- Want to see what you're doing? There's room for a lamp to cast light rather than just a spot.

... And yeah, it feels like cheating.

But, right when I was burning out from being there every night for a month, crawling underneath, fixing the same pinholes for the fifth time, going home sore, it's let me not even think about it and had me going another month of nightly work.

I'm not absolute about anything. I proved my point that it can be done without, it's just less comfortable, and I don't know that I'd have spent the money to build one myself. But it sure has helped more than anything to keep up my momentum. Frustration and futility are the two common silver bullets for my projects, so, it's made a huge difference.

Anyone doing a restoration is crazy to not build a body dolly, if not a rotisserie too. And with 8 bolts it flatpacks back into half a broom closet. Just my two cents.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

First thing I did with the body dolly up, was want to inspect the rear assembly. Since I'm borrowing someone else's garage as a shop, conditional on them not needing it, I was never comfortable taking the rear off because it would be stranded on the jackstands. Now that it's on the body dolly it's not as big of a deal. I could at least roll it to the driveway on 5 minutes notice.










I had been spraying insides and outsides of all suspension bolts at start and end of every night for over a week so I figured they'd all be loose. They were. Except for one...










Oh the nut came off easy enough. And the bolt side spun on its own just fine. But the bolt would not come out.

I worked it back and forth. I spun it. I slipped the nut back on and sledgehammered it until the mounting bracket was bent like you can see in the photo above and the nut was mashed like a scoop of ice cream. The bolt would just not separate from the control arm.

Eventually I just spun it with the impact wrench until it started smoking, but all that did was tear the sleeve away from the rubber. 

I ended up having to take an angle grinder to it 4 times to chop it down.

I presume the whole rubber and sleeve are pressed into the control arm, but, no matter, since I had an extra set from the other vehicle.

An Opel guy had mentioned that since the torque tube was off, the diff was exposed (badly, caked with mud) and would need disassembly. Luckily I still had the diff and torque tube attached to the original (yellow) rear assembly, so I'm able to swap them if I so choose. I'm not sure how to identify which might be a better candidate (later years have superior seals), but for now, one already has the torque tube on it.

We also had some idle guesses about what components weighed, so, I took liberty of weighing them the next night:










Rear Axle Assembly Weight (no rims): 140 lbs
Torque Tube assembly Weight: 26 lbs
Control arms, Shocks, Track Rod Weight: 18 lbs
Total rear assembly weight minus springs: 184 lbs (plus a few bolts I missed).

Driveshaft weight: 10 lbs
Engine Mount weight: 16 lbs

... if anyone ever searches for those terms in the future, hopefully that helps. (My bathroom scale has crappy precision, don't take it as gospel).

...

As I was stumped for quiet things to work on, 2 filler tasks had been occupying my time for the last month:

1 - Pick away with a screwdriver at the rubber sheet covering the trans tunnel.

2 - Clean up tools and vacuum out the weld/grinding dust.

I was actually stalling for time, because someone had told me an easy way to remove it was to use dry ice to superfreeze the rubber, then smash it with a hammer. Brian here had mentioned that it gets cold enough in Canada to just let it sit outside on a cold night, and then come smash it just before dawn.

I didn't want to take the car off the jackstands and push it outside until I was done welding, but then the obvious hit me: "Just open the garage door, point a furnace fan underneath the car, and kill a half hour in the driveway with the car running until the Opel is all frozen."

So I checked the weather and it looked like we weren't going to get any more cold (enough) snaps this year.

Abandoning ship I bought a wire cup for the grinder and stripped it off manually in a few hours. Feels dumb that I waited weeks for cold weather just to avoid a few hours work. It's not that much work.










I'll come back and finish it up with a paint scuffer later. I just needed to check for holes, since I noticed a pinhole just below the headlight lever. Again, my goal being to not be welding in the trans tunnel anymore so I could rig up the driveline.

Umm... hmm... hang on, I'd lost the pinhole I spotted earlier...










Uhh, a bit like Clever Tom and the Leprechaun, minus the red ribbons.

I'd run out of easy stuff. The lower, flat, and long weld seams were done. I figured the next thing I do should the be the strongest and the easiest to line up. That was the heater box. I left lots of metal (the box is made of thicker sheet) and lots of overlap when I first cut it out, so I knew it was located well.










Welding went mostly okay, it's hard to reach there. You have to lean over the rockers, around the doorframe a bit, and then forward and then sideways. 

Also, these were my first inside corners on the vehicle. The grinder wheel can't reach every area on an inside corner. I bought the cheapest die grinding burrs (rotary files), a $40 8-pack, and they were all junk. Suitable for aluminum maybe. I'd get maybe 20 seconds of grinding out of them before they'd dull. More on that later.

In general, it was a treat to not burn through the second I touched the trigger, if all metal on the car was this thick I'd be fine.










Now that the side of the passenger firewall was anchored at the correct height and width, I could do the long seam.

I originally thought I'd left far too much material here on top, but once I actually sunk the tail end of the trans tunnel down where it needed to be that last inch, it really pulled the dash area back. I was left with butted metal 1/2 way up and even a gap at the top.

Frustrating weld. Get the weld done in about 20 minutes, patiently, 1/8th inch at a time, then an extra stringer on top to make sure it's not just sitting on the surface. Even then, like 15 pinholes. Kept climbing into the engine bay and back to try to fix them. Spent a whole night just on fixing some of this seam before giving up with trying to grind flush.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

Amateur Welding Tangent:

This was the moment I decided that from now on, no more butt or seam welds.

My early logic was: "Don't rely on seam sealer, take your time, weld the whole edge."

I'd been suggested a variety of advice on bodywork and did perhaps the worst thing, tried to mix it. 

Option 1 - Overlap sheetmetal and rosette weld. 

Option 2 - Zero overlap and butt weld. 

Option 3 - Overlap, rosette and then seam weld, best of both?

Instead, I thought "Option 3 seems like overkill. If I do that, I'll have 3x more linear feet of weld than I have of seam. I'll skip rosettes, just overlap and then seam weld. If I think it's too weak, I'll drill through one sheet after and rosette weld to add more strength.

And in my hubris, I perhaps misattributed why spot welds and seam sealer are done, thinking it was only for cost. I thought I'd just take a bit more time and do it "properly". 

Here's a diagram of where I went wrong:










Posted that to a welding forum for the guys to get a kick out of.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

Back to the heater core, the cowl was floating pretty high above it, so I wanted it clamped down. Went through all of my clamps before I found some both short and deep enough to go up, around the drain trough, and back down (they clamped a piece of wood).










Just needing enough tacks to hold them together. I didn't want to weld more until I figured out how I'm going to grind inside the corners.

Positioning was stupid, it's not that far into the car but it's just about impossible to reach. And if I can reach, I have nothing to hold my torso there while I use my hands to weld. When I went back later, best I could figure was to lay on my back with ass on the edge of the parcel shelf, seat rail grinding into my back, one shoulder in the footwell, reaching upwards to wash myself with the fountain of metal dripping down. Caught my hair smouldering again.










Moving to the right, I next had to weld the underside of the cowl to the side of the car. There's at least a 1/4" a gap here, I'm not sure why. My thoughts:

1 - It was cut properly, but my fitment is terrible (and it's way too late to change).

2 - I cut it out that way (it's about a sloppy angled cut with a cutoff wheel).

3 - I cut it properly but in the mad dash in Phoenix to shove the cars together, I discovered there wasn't enough draft angle to actually make the pieces fit, so I trimmed it.










In any case, with rosette welds being the new commitment, it was time for my first bracket.

I should have picked a simpler bracket for my first.

The passenger wall isn't straight like the driver's side is. The passenger side has has 4 different angles in the vertical direction, and the cowl has 3 different angle changes in the horizontal direction. None of the angle changes match up with each other, so the resulting bracket requires 5 cuts and 7 different bends.










I did make a design error. You get to choose which side of the bracket is flush, and which has cuts taken out of it when you do your origami. If the pieces you're joining butt, then it doesn't matter. But I chose for the flush side to be the wall, and made my cuts along the cowl. The cowl is floating off the wall by 1/4", so all the missing "V" sections had air behind them (versus, if I'd done it the other way, the wall would have the "V" sections, and it doesn't matter because the wall is continuous).










Not that it matters, the welds came out hideous. So much for a pretty bracket. The footwell is no wider than my welding helmet, and I can't reach or look across from the driver's side over the trans tunnel, so this was all welded somewhat blindly with my left hand from me using the rocker panel as a pillow, my hips balancing on a chair outside the car, and me supporting myself into position by lifting myself up on the A-pillar like a monkey. If I had a 3rd arm or a bored child I'd have used them to take a picture.

Let's try the driver's side!

Friends in Phoenix had helped bend up the edge of the cowl (no way to make it angle itself in otherwise), so that had to be straightened first. Revealing... damage that's not my fault! The front of the yellow car had disintegrated over 50 years, and the cowl had already rusted through when I got it.










No problem, I'll make a wider bracket and cut away the rust. This bracket donor material, courtesy of a BBQ wing (1mm, same as most of the Opel). This time I put the "V" sections along the wall.










Side stepping for a moment, I have to figure out how to weld the far, inside vertical corner of the cowl, since the driver's side doesn't have the heater box, the cowl continues to an underhang below the fender.

A little bracket. A little bashing. And using the gap I just made cutting away rust, I can sort of weld, a tiny bit. A bit more. Missed a spot. Oh well, hold the trigger and hope it fills.










My quality is plummeting. But no one will ever see any of these brackets, ever, after I finish the car. My shame is mine only to bear.

Next, the fitment issue with the gap between the cowl and the driver's footwell. It is what it is, I prioritized the windshield arch and let this be the result.

Not a problem, another easy bracket.










Great, so it's time to weld each of those in. Starting with the side. This is even worse than trying to weld in the passenger compartment, because you're welding 6" deeper into the footwell, the pedals won't let you go as deep, and the steering column support won't let you work perpendicular to the weld. So you're upsidedown and sideways again.

I weld along the side, start doing the underhang, and then notice... what the heck is going on with my holes? The one big hole was already there in the scrap piece, that's okay, but why can I see light through the others?










HOW DID I CUT THAT SO WRONG? I didn't just measure. After I made the bracket I also held it up and traced the outline. Then drew my cut line. 

Great. So much for remembering to put the cut lines on the correct side. Now I have 6 semi-circles to fill. One step forward two steps back.

How did I not notice this earlier before I'd welded half the bracket on? Because the angle you're seeing the pictures taken from, are angles that are possible for a camera, but impossible for my head to be in. And even if I could, there's nowhere to put a light that wouldn't be blocking my vision, so it was dark. 

At this point I put the camera away and finished the welding without it. But wait, it gets better, then worse again!


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

Here's the underhang at the edge of the cowl and the bracket, pretty simple:










It's quite a gap to fill, so gotta make sure I fixture it right:










Easy enough. Weld from above first. Do the middle first, come back and move the wood to do the edges later.










From above, that worked amazing. It's been a month since I welded something that wasn't vertical or upsidedown. Not a single burnthrough either the orange footwell or the yellow cowl. I even lay an extra stringer or two on top since I want to be sure it's waterproof. I can't grind or finish any of this since it's in an alcove under the fender, but it looks good so far.

Let's check underneath and weld the rosettes on either side of the seam now:










It didn't get welded at all. Somehow I gapfilled 3/16", laying a bead right onto it, without any of it welding through. As if I was using a copper backing plate. Heat resistant BBQ paint is my guess.

I literally just grabbed one end of the bracket and yanked it away. No point in having metal interfering with the electrical box.

Except that there were a few places it wasn't quite flush. Not a big deal, this was so easy, I'll just lay a few stringers into the gaps and across the seam. And let's get the easy parts of the steering column bracket while we're at it.










I went from zero burnthroughs into the cowl, to 15. Fix those, cause another 15. Fix those, cause another 15. Back and forth, 3 hours later until I've basically tack-filled an inch wide strip along the edge of the cowl and give up. Super for waterproofing, good thing it's only the electrical box below it.










Giving up, because everything I try just makes it worse. 

I move onto the steering column bracket. It has some pretty big diagonal scars in it from the way the angle grinder had to cut it away from the donor cars. A couple little patch pieces at least give something for the weld to hang onto:










Good enough.

One oddity. There's a slightly thicker plate that the steering column is spot welded to, underneath the thinner sheet metal of the cowl. I went to weld a little bit around that seam to reinforce it, and it just bubbled and hissed and dripped away, and never fused. I melted probably an inch away from the corner without it fusing or finding a spot weld to anchor to.

From what I can tell, these two layers aren't spot welded anywhere. Nor brazed. They seem to just be glued together and then seam sealed over, at the factory. It ends right at the edge of the cowl










Onto the next thing. Over by the VIN area in the engine bay, over and around the heater box there's more seams to complete.










Few issues:

1 - Even though it's screwed down, they're the first screws I put in when I was joining the two cars to make the windshield arch line up. They held a lot of force from me prying to force everything to fit, and buckled a bit. They need more clamping force and some holes to plug weld through. (This area was brass brazed from the factory).

2 - The gap along the side is too big to fill. It needs a bracket.

3 - There is a tab/wing that goes into the space in the cowl, perhaps to direct airflow (I actually have 2 wings, one from each car). It's almost torn off.

So, first tack the tab down better. Then connect the top better. Then fab and weld a bracket.










So far so good.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

I'd tried repairing the vertical sheet metal by building a stack of weld and grinding it flat. It didn't work, but, whatever. After playing the 3 hour game of "Fix it until it's f...ruined" on the driver's side of the cowl, I'm leaving the passenger side alone until maybe later.

But while I'm squished into the engine bay, might as well clean and patch the reverse sides of the vertical seams below the cowl:










And speaking of which, back around the inside of the car, I've since assembled a variety of options for grinding inside corners. I've tried:

- Dremel with sandpaper drums (10 years old wet climate glue, rips apart in 5 seconds in a dry climate). Burned through a dozen at least.

- "High speed steel" rotary files/grinding burrs. High speed cheese more like it, they remove maybe a pencil eraser's worth of steel before they're just dull noisemakers.

- Die grinder abrasive stones. Made of chalk apparently, they're good at turning abrasive into aerosols, not much else.

- Air-powered miniature belt sander. Good at tearing sandpaper.

It's better, but not great. Good thing no one will ever see this again. As long as the blower assembly fits, it's done.










Now that the cowl is in place and I'm sure I won't have to be bending things away and reaching inside, I can secure the wing-things that follow the windshield arch.










Driver's side done. Being conservative about removing material for vanity's sake, it's an important structural area leading into the A pillar and I don't want any burnthrough craters.










And, passenger side done.

There's a little bit of angle difference between the yellow and orange cars, in terms of where the interior bends are after the windshield arch. Far as I can tell, that wasn't me, they're just not the same angles. Hopefully doesn't matter, as I prioritized the exterior of the car.

Running out of places to patch. Next up are the holes at the bottoms of the firewall cut away by the previous owner. Couple ugly patches to make:










I'll clean them up later. Moving on.

Underneath, I had a slice missing from where I was overly enthusiastic with the grinder, where the seat rail meets the transmission rail:










And that should be the last of joining the two cars together!

A serving of humble pie... after 10 months elapsed (really only 3 months of evenings, the 6 months I didn't do work doesn't count), this is the amount of work I figured I would do in about 4 hours at Doug's place before driving to the inspection office with the car and heading home.

Partially that's because I thought the VIN was in the driver's footwell and wasn't aware I'd be removing a windshield, dash, and cowl, and all that complicated internal welding. Because I hadn't done my research.

Partially that's because I'm doing a lot more work than I would have then (it would've been a chop and tack, gorilla tape the seams, not finished welding).

Partially that's because I'm restarting my momentum every night, I work 7 days a week so there's no sinking into a good workflow and riding it all weekend.

Partially because I have to time my grinding to the first 30 minutes of the night, and then work around whatever else I can do without grinding noise.

But mostly, "Just overlap them and weld" involved a hell of a lot more decisions about exactly how and where to do those things than I imagined it would. Where do I cut? Where do I weld? How to I cut it? How do I clamp it? How do I position myself? What order does this need to be done in to prioritize the areas that need to be perfectly fit? Etc.

I'm frankly lucky that zero welding, and bodywork stomped roughly into place was accepted without more than a glance at the vehicle. It's legal, it just would've been a lot more questions to answer.

Anyway, big milestone for me:

At this point... I no longer have 2 cars to join together!

I have 1 continuous car, that just needs a lot of work.

Time to take a break from welding!


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

Now that I have a car, I want to work on the driveline. That's the fun and rewarding part, where you at least get to see that the motor spins and turns the wheels. It's a temporary step that's just going to have to be undone soon, the car is nowhere ready to be rolling, but, it's a mental milestone that makes the project feel worth doing again after 10 months of tedious repairs.

Before I can even think about mounting the motor, I need a rear suspension, torque tube, and driveshaft to connect it to.

After removing the rear suspension that can't reasonably be run without rebuilding it (diff has been exposed to dirt for decades perhaps), I rolled that away and rolled in my spare, original to the Yellow car. It's a lot harder for 1 person to do than I imagined. The bolts for the torque tube aren't very long, the angle has to be just right, and the whole thing wants to flip and flop around. It took me most of an evening.

I get most of it hooked up, and then remember that the passenger shock mount is just a gaping hole. If you recall this:










What the previous owner had done, presumably around the time he cut away the transmission tunnel, was to remove not just the driveshaft, but the torque tube that leads to the differential as well.

The torque tube is 1 of the 3 points of contact for the suspension (5 if you count the shocks, 6 if you count the track rod). If you remove it, there is nothing that prevents the differential from rotating around the axle and pointing straight up or down (instead of forwards).

What the guys who helped buy and transport the cars for me in Phoenix discovered as they tried to make the car roll, is that the whole suspension was dragging. One guy later discovered that the passenger side shock had punched right through the suspension mount. He fabricated two temporary plates to sister what used to be the shock mount so that the vehicle could at least roll around.

Since he got it done before I ever even saw my cars, and they'd served their purpose so well, in the 10 months that've followed I've never even taken a closer look at them. He also took time to chop out the undamaged matching section from the vehicle carcass I left in his back yard, and sent it my way to use a patch piece.

So, since I was looking forward to getting a break from welding... time for more welding!










It makes a night and day difference to be welding metal that's just a tiny bit thicker than the 1mm used most places on the body.

I reinforced it underneath, but couldn't fit a grinder in to make it look pretty. I'll revisit with a wire brush and some primer later.

The challenging part about this was positioning. I could not get into a position where I could see what I was welding. The gap between the suspension cross member and the upper parcel shelf member just barely fits a welding mask sideways, definitely no room for shoulders to clear. The suspension beam is digging into your ribs, the angle iron above the sway-bar mounts is digging into your hips, the lower parcel shelf cross member is digging into the side of your knee. Just a miserable place to weld sideways.

Trying to see what I was doing, my mask started sliding off into the gas tank area. Tried to catch it, let the stinger touch metal, got a quick zap of welder's flash. 1/4 second tops.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

Tangent story:

Next day is fine. Second day I get 4 hours sleep, eyes kind of sore the way they'd be when sleep deprived.

Left eye was especially bothering me during the day. Dripping tears, red, itchy, and not quite painful but irritating.

Come afternoon it hurts enough I want a nap, but, after a few seconds of my eyes closed it hurts even more. It's unbearably irritating, I can't fall asleep. I attempt to wash out my eyes a half dozen times. I try to sleep, can't. I keep rubbing it despite knowing not to, like scratching a mosquito bite it's the only thing that provides temporary relief.

Down the rabbit hole of self-diagnosis, hospitals not being a great thing to visit right now and it's too late for clinics. Do I have pink eye? What's pink eye? It's not welder's flash, I've had that before, feels like sand you can't rub out from under your eyelid. This now feels like a shard of metal under there.

I lift my eyelid and sweep a neodymium magnet under it. I was grinding the second night and did get some spatter ricochets in my face. I find nothing.

Off to a pharmacy for eyedrops. It's better when my eye is open.

Eyedrops don't help. They do nothing.

Whelp, off to emergency clinic an hour later.

Emergency is a ghosttown. Screened at the door for Covid symptoms. Give them my symptoms, tell them I was welding and grinding, no chalky discharge, doesn't feel like welder's flash, I suspect a bit of grinder wheel in there.

Doctor comes to see me. Takes him forever to find the equipment he needs, no one remembers when it was last used.

Doctor asks me to open my eye all the way. I can't, lights are too bright and I drove over in the dark. I tell him I can hold it open or he can. He looks at it, tells me there's a black spot on my iris.

I ask him how they can get it out. He says they can't, it's welder's flash. I suspect he's concluding that just because triage wrote that down. He claims he's sure.

Okay, I ask what they can do about it.

He says first he'll freeze it. Good. It'll feel weird otherwise with someone touching my eyeball.

Then he'll scrape the burn away with the tip of a needle.

... umm.

So I lay back, and he's getting ready, and he can't seem to find anything he needs.

He freezes my eye and we wait.

He goes to flush my eye out with saline, but doesn't seem to know how the bottle works and sputters my eye with it like the mustard bottle does if you don't shake the mustard to the tip first. He apologizes.

I ask him if he's done this before. He says "First time."

... umm.

We wait a bit more for a nurse, to help hold my eye open, which, either from the freezing, the tension, or looking up at the bright lights on the ceiling is refusing to open.

I ask, since it's his first time, and it's, y'know, an eyeball, if I should tough it through and just stay up all night, and go to a specialist in the morning.

He says "Oh, I was joking. Just joking."

Ohhhhhh. Okay, so what are we really going to do to my eye?

"Oh not that part, we're still scraping it with a needle."

... umm.

He says the reason it hurts when I close my eyes is because eyes don't really ever stay still, they flutter a bit. And the burn is rising up from the surface of the cornea like thorns, yanking on the eyelid over and over. If it was over the retina or the lens, he'd say wait for a specialist because it could affect my vision. But since it's just over the iris and I haven't had any change to my vision, it's like having a bug on the windshield.

The nurse dude comes over and holds my eye open so the Doc can scrape away. He tells me not to move my eye, or he'll scrape the wrong part. I pick a dot on the ceiling and stare like it's the last pussy I'll ever see.

He scrapes for 10 seconds. Zero pain, but it's disgustingly unsettling. The needle is pulling my eye sideways as he scrapes and then when he lifts it goes back to center like a punching clown. I doesn't hurt, but I can hear it. Like someone scraping your cheek with their fingernail. Like trying to light a match in slow motion. Why is it this noisy? I'm grimacing and trying to keep my eye still.

He stops. Whew.

"There" he says.

What now?

"Oh I'm not done. I'm just taking a break. Here we go again."

Two more rounds.

"There, I think I got most of it."

I sit up, ask what I do when the freezing wears off if it still itches.

He says it shouldn't, he scraped most of it down, but gives me the rest of the freezing tube and says I can add one drop every few hours if it helps me sleep.

How long until it's healed?

"1-2 days. You shouldn't notice anything."

Damn, that's quick. I ask how big the burn was.

"Maybe 1mm x 0.5mm", and he draws a picture of my eyeball and shows me where it was. Tells me if I use the flash on my cell phone I could probably still see some black flecks of the burn.

30 seconds of scraping for something smaller than a pinhead. I guess it's good he was taking his time.

After that my eye hurt and was still dripping tears, but it felt good to keep it closed. Slept no problem. Sore the next couple days, but sure enough, day 3 feels normal.

0/5 stars. Would not recommend.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

Anyway, now that the rear suspension and torque tube are in place, it's time to think about the driveshaft. No point in mounting it, because I'm going to have to haul it around and try to fit different things to it.

Here is it next to the motor:









(aside - That's my 200th photo in this thread).

The inside of the driveshaft splines are about 1", the outside of the motor splines are about 1.6".

For comparison, the cross section on the tranny output from my mid-sized 4x4 SUV is only 1.2".

Cross-sectional-area-wise that motor shaft is about 2.5x the real estate, so, can easily handle 2.5x the torque.

Batteries are good for some 700+ hp.
Speed controller is good for 480 hp.
Motor I'm not sure of, I think 480 would be too high for more than a sprint.

Doesn't matter, differential will need a dentist if I try to use much more than stock. It's just a fitment problem.

Even if I'm just building a coupler myself, I'm going to need something to interface with the GT's driveshaft. That means the output shaft from an old transmission. The local GT Co-op has several, including one that the founder stole the input shaft from 15 years ago.

Here's the motor, a rebuilt but obsolete for the owner 4-speed for scale (55lbs vs. 255lbs for the motor), and the parts tranny:










In the inset photo above... going through old photos my friends in Phoenix took of the previous owner's garage, there was a transmission there.

I recall them even mentioned this, and said it was missing a bell housing. I figured it would be useless then, as a typical EV conversion involves an adapter plate that connects motor face to bell housing.

I don't know who ended up with it, if anyone. I would've walked right past it.

Prior to seeing the tranmission, I could not have identified it as such. I know nothing about cars so, the only way I'd identify a transmission is by the distinct shape of a bell housing.

Driveshaft is rusty but maybe salvageable. I only have the one. The nose cleaned up decently, giving the rest a bath in Evaporust while I work on the tranny:










Apparently special tools are required to properly disassemble a transmission, of which I have none except the not-so-subtle application of persistence.










So far so good.

Depending on how far back I can get the motor into the transmission tunnel (and where I want the center to be), will also depend on how much of a driveshaft extension I need.

If I want the motor to stay above the trans rails (like the transmission does), the farthest rearward I could put it is about this far:










However, I previously thought the lowest point on the car was the bottom of the trans rail. Having see couple GT undersides now, I note that the exhaust pipes are way lower than that, so I could have some room to play at stock clearances.

If I'm going to have the coupler be that long, it can't be unsupported all the way from the motor shaft, even if the motor shaft is as beefy as it is. So that means probably keeping the tail housing on the transmission, which has seals, a bushing, and a bearing (that I would have to replace with a sealed one or add a seal to, since the transmission body would be absent). That's roughly the right length, and I could mount that to the face of the motor with an adapter plate.










Something like that.

I was reluctant to do that, but it has the added bonus of solving my only really critical dashboard concern: speedometer/odometer.

Except, this is an "old style" tail housing and is not a match for the cable coming off of either of my instrument panels. I need a different speedometer worm gear or something to make it work properly.

Else, Plan B is to pick a longer driveshaft.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

Threads are useless without pics.

Videos are better than pics.

I was feeling kinda depressed about it having taken me 10 months to do this work (10 months elapsed, 3 months of work). All I've done is weld the a little bit of sheet metal, I compare what I got done after 2 weeks of evenings and think "that's it?".

So, I did a little panning tour of where I've welded. Moving just slow enough to say "X to Y" for each seam. Turns out, it's a 5 minute video of me just monotonously reading out what got welded:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2rsRyfvLbE

It still doesn't feel like it should've taken this long, but, it does feel a bit more like I have been actually progressing.

In other news, I asked for specs on the motor shaft from the manufacturer, and to my surprise they sent me an entire page of data just for the spline.



















I took that to The Gear Center, a gear/driveshaft store to see if they could find anything that could fit. They got stumped and said they'd look into it for a couple days for me. Not promising.

Went back to the forklift junkyard I got the motor from, he'd originally said he was going to try to save the gearbox for me when they got around to scrapping the rest of the machine. I presumed since I never heard from him that it wasn't a priority before they hauled it to the junkyard. Confirmed that, yeah, that was the case. He said I could try the forklift company, but to not expect it to be affordable. They have another pair of those lifts they're turning into a single working one, but it might not be for months if at all.

If the gear is too expensive, or I can't find it at all, my plan is to spin the motor up, use the grinder to shave the teeth off (I don't have a lathe, I don't want it disassemble the motor, and the shaft is hardened anyway), and then build a taper-lock coupler instead (a sleeve with a matching hole through it, a slot cut longitudinally through it, and then a pair of screws on each side to clamp it tight):










After picking up the motor 2 or 3 times, I've had enough of that. I'm expecting to do that at least a half-dozen times, and I don't think I could do it a half-dozen times safely without a jack. 255lbs is enough to pin me and break ribs if I screw up, and it'd be hours before anyone would find me. I'd jig something up with a ramp or my floor jack if I had to, but, I'll want a motorcycle lift to work on my motorcycle, and, might as well buy it now since they're 50% off ($60). That'll help me lift the motor into position (the car being on the body dolly, I'll then move the whole car to where the motor lines up).










...

And now after 8 or 10 posts in a row, anyone following is all caught up with my last 2 months of progress.


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## jonescg (Nov 3, 2010)

I would never, ever have the patience to do the cutting, grinding and welding that you have just done. Great work, and nice to finally be at the go-bits stage


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## theonetruerat (May 17, 2017)

I have to admit that I haven't read enough to see if you listed the exact diameter of your motor shaft or the tooth count. I can't make out the spec sheet well enough to see the measurements. 

I am having a similar problem finding a female splined coupler for my motor (1 3/16" x 18 spline)- after much googling and cursing I figured out that it matches a late 60s dodge clutch and some high end VW dune buggy clutch. These are straight spline but should get me close enough to get the job done. 

I would be glad to do a quick search through all the info I amassed looking for mine if you throw me the specs for your motor.


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## theonetruerat (May 17, 2017)

Ok - scratch that. I managed to blow up the bottom picture to a readable size.

A quick search of 1 5/8" x 25 spline brought up a ford massy clutch alignment tool. 

https://www.tractorpartsasap.com/new-ford-massey-ferguson-119887.html


You might be able to find a scrap clutch at a tractor repair shop - it wouldn't be a perfect match but some quality time with a file and a stone should get you what you need.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

> A quick search of 1 5/8" x 25 spline brought up a ford massy clutch alignment tool.


Heh, that mirrors what the guy at Gear Center said yesterday. "40mm... hmm... *calculator*... that's pretty close to 1 5/8"..."

The tool you showed looks like the male spline, not the female, but, $18 is a great price. If couplers are going to be roughly in that range, I'd be happy.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

jonescg said:


> I would never, ever have the patience to do the cutting, grinding and welding that you have just done. Great work, and nice to finally be at the go-bits stage


More philosophical tangent, skip if you just want EV stuff:

This is by far the biggest and most expensive project I've ever undertaken, so I've had a lot of time for introspection and reflection on it.

I think the biggest thing going for me was ignorance. Everyone kept saying, especially guys in the GT community, that this was such a huge task, and so much work. And I just didn't see it. I was too ignorant to be intimidated by it. It's just some welding.

I stand by the metric that making decisions is 98% of the work. 2% is actually just doing the work. There was actually a lot more decision-making than I could have imagined with joining two bodies together.

When guys who've rebuilt literally every bolt on their cars and it taken years to do so are saying things like how the bodywork on my car is too intimidating for them and I'm crazy for trying... my thoughts are that rebuilding an engine or diagnosing carburettor issues is crazy and intimidating. That seems to me like I have to learn and get good at 100 things.

I'm good with projects that have discrete, measurable progress, even if the work is large. Stacking 10,000 bricks doesn't intimidate me. Laying 300 of them level and spaced and to the proper measurements where if it's not perfect later you have to tear it apart, does. As long as when I do something I know I'm taking a step towards the goal I can be motivated to keep working on it. When I spend a week doing something and haven't figured anything out (inverter work), or I have to undo the work I've done (spending 3x as much time fixing pinholes as welding the damn seam in the first place), that's the stuff that's crippling to me and makes me want to quit.

The best kind of projects for me would be like building a giant LEGO set. Clear, perfect, unambiguous instructions. Clear, definitive, measurable, confident progress towards the end goal. The actual amount of work doesn't bother me at all. It's just work.

And the frustrating part for me that took patience wasn't doing the work. It was doing the work in such small chunks.

I'm the kind of person that wants to wake up in the morning (ehn, afternoon), start to work on a project, and then not sleep or eat for 2 days. My motivation, my problem solving, and my progress is all momentum based. I'm slow to start, slow to start to put the pieces together in my head as to what each little decision means consequence-wise across the whole project, to juggle all that and figure out what I want to do and how. And then I'm slow to wind down. After I leave I'm still problem solving in the back of my head and figuring things out, but unable to get them done.

By only working on it 4 hours a night... I get there, it's too cold to comfortably touch metal because I just had the garage door open. Wander around trying to remember what decisions I was making the day before as things heat up. How I'm going to get into position to do that. What tools I need. Etc. And then at the end of the day, cleaning things up, documenting what I did, turning fans on and airing all the smoke out of the garage, etc. I kinda lose 45 minutes each way.

When things get frustrating, there's an urge for me to say I need a break from it, I'll come back to it later. But that's just active procrastination. If I'm frustrated now, I'll definitely be too frustrated to restart this later. At least I have momentum now. Power through it, don't quit, and try to get through it. And then often I can motivate myself to do that... and then my time constraints kick my feet out from under me anyways. Forcing me to do the most frustrating process.

It's not like I know what I'm doing or have lots of practice, so, to stay in a groove when things are working for me is important, and, the hour or two I'm working (when I can't even run noisy tools, I have to juggle what to do the next day) is just not a good way to go. I know everyone's like that a little bit, but I'm like that a lot.

But... I just don't let that be the excuse that stops me from going. Making it a routine to go to the shop every day, regardless of whether I knew what I'd be doing, took the decision-making out of it. Else it's easy for me to do nothing for a month. Even just, the last week I've done basically nothing but documentation. Feels like I'm slipping.

Everyone's different. Lots of people are the opposite. They need the task to change. They get sick of doing one thing. Spending more than an hour or two doing the same thing is hell for them.

I think it's good to figure out both what works for you, and to push your limits anyways. People kinda get set in their ways too much as adults.


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## theonetruerat (May 17, 2017)

MattsAwesomeStuff said:


> Heh, that mirrors what the guy at Gear Center said yesterday. "40mm... hmm... *calculator*... that's pretty close to 1 5/8"..."
> 
> The tool you showed looks like the male spline, not the female, but, $18 is a great price. If couplers are going to be roughly in that range, I'd be happy.


More critical than the tool is the list of potential donor tractors - although half of those are likely to be the smaller 21 tooth configuration that the front of the tool covers.


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## tylerwatts (Feb 9, 2012)

Nice update Matt. Looks like lots of work. Keep at it.

Cheers
Tyler


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

theonetruerat said:


> More critical than the tool is the list of potential donor tractors


Oh, gotcha. I thought you were posting the tool itself. That's clever.

I don't have a farm equipment junkyard near me. I'm not sure what type of business to call to find out about that either. Bit out of my wheelhouse.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

I called a half-dozen more places today.

Most transmission shops noped out. They have nothing that big.

Called a few tractor places, no match.

Did find some things on Ebay under $100 (a few more above $300):

https://www.ebay.com/itm/1865836-Ma...794695?hash=item20d42eddc7:g:RCwAAOSwjMBc0xPA

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Tisco-E3NN...356fc:g:2WAAAMXQzopRGD1S&shqty=1&isGTR=1#shId

So, theonetruerat was spot on. Tractor clutches.

I wish there was a place where I could go through the junk bins for someone who bought a new one, since, almost certainly what wears is the clutch plate itself, not the splines.

After shipping they'll be at least $100 each. I don't think I want to pay that much. I think I'm more likely to turn the shaft down with a grinder and make a taper-lock.

Waiting/hoping to hear back from a few other tractor part sellers.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

Trickier than I thought.

There aren't any tractor boneyards around for me to pick through.

PTOs from Massey-Ferguson and Fords, or clutches (same thing? pictures look the same, are all PTO's clutches?)... and seems to be around $65 US is the cheapest.

Called the forklift place. They said the transmission shaft would probably work if I could give them a matching model. I asked for a ballpark price and the guy said "Oh... thousands?" Lol. Nope.

Tried McMasterCarr. Nope.

It's weird, I would've thought that this would be a thing that already exists, somewhere, even if rare.


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## tylerwatts (Feb 9, 2012)

Matt

PTO is a clutch, just not sprung so it stays disengaged if 'off'.

Not sure who you contacted but who services these tractors?you could try a service agent or a friendly farmer, they never throw stuff out so might have something lying around.

Cheers
Tyler


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

tylerwatts said:


> Not sure who you contacted but who services these tractors?you could try a service agent or a friendly farmer, they never throw stuff out so might have something lying around.


No one nearby apparently.

And, I can't just run around and ask any farmer if they have particular models of Massey-Ferguson or Ford tractors with blown clutches.

That's like asking random car enthusiests if they have winter tires they want to sell you.

Dealers want like $120 for the clutches, locally.

I'm tempted to go with Plan B: Grind it down, Taper Lock.

But maybe I'll try Plan A2: Get out the hacksaw and fabricate my own 25-spline female coupler.

Or, JB-weld was on sale the other day. Maybe I'll chop up a dollarstore strainer for its stainless mesh, pick up some grinder sweepings with a magnet, and use the three of those together an epoxy spline coupler . I don't expect it to hold, but I am half-tempted to try.

There are many wrong ways to do this before I go spend $100+ on some teeth.

It's been a few years since I fired up the Tormach or the milling machine I have access to. Not really keen to do that though, definitely cheating to use a pair of $12,000 machines on a $2000 project.


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## Duncan (Dec 8, 2008)

Hi Matt

They are not working just now because of the shut down but we normally have LOCAL Facebook buy and sell pages - may be worth advertising on those sites

Wanted old tractor clutch plate from a XXX


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## theonetruerat (May 17, 2017)

It's been a few years since I fired up the Tormach or the milling machine I have access to. Not really keen to do that though, definitely cheating to use a pair of $12,000 machines on a $2000 project.[/QUOTE]

If you have access to a cnc or a manual mill you can use them to turn down the shaft. Mount the motor and apply a low voltage - the motor becomes the "4th axis" in the mill and you can cut down the teeth and add a key slot. Pick up a coupler with a slightly smaller internal diameter to the shaft and turn the shaft to fit. A straight keyed shaft will be a lot easier to cut than a taper lock.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

Been thinking about spline coupler options...

I'm getting closer to being tempted by the JB weld option, at least temporarily.

Another option is to just fabricate a coupler manually with a bandsaw or scroll saw cutting the tooth profile (maybe using a JB welded ring as a template).

Another option that I'm actually pretty close to attempting is to use the motor shaft as a form to sand-cast a copper equivalent. Then use the sand cast splines as the tooling electrode on a crude sinker EDM machine I'd build (capacitor, lightbulbs, bolt, fishtank pump and tupperware).

I could use the motor directly, but the electrode does wear a little bit, and as it's a thermal process, the shaft will wear about as fast as the workpiece. Plus I'd have to suspend the 255lb motor above the bath.

I've never sand cast before (or EDM), but I think it's worth attempting.

Not the easiest way to save $100 but, that's two other things I'm interested in learning how to do anyways and I'm always looking for an excuse to build new tools.


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## dtbaker (Jan 5, 2008)

MattsAwesomeStuff said:


> Been thinking about spline coupler options...


using hand tools or epoxy to build a transmission coupler to carry a couple hundred ft-# of torque at significant RPM is really just asking for disaster. 

If couplers are not well-aligned and of appropriate materials, they won't last long, and failure will be spectacular and potential dangerous if the driveshaft starts whipping round under the car when the coupler fails.

Matt, you have astounding electrical skills, and have made great progress mechanically on your frame and bodywork.... but DO NOT SKIMP on transmission/driveshaft couplers or driveshaft.

I'd suggest you call around local machine shops, hot rod or 4x4 shops that modify driveshafts, and they can probably make you a custom driveshaft with U-joints matching the splines you need.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

dtbaker said:


> using hand tools or epoxy to build a transmission coupler to carry a couple hundred ft-# of torque at significant RPM is really just asking for disaster.


I mostly concur. But, lots of times people say "can't" when they really mean sub-optimal. People said I couldn't built an EV with recycled 18650s, people said I couldn't weld thin sheetmetal with a flux core welder. People said you can't cast copper in plaster of paris. If it's not much cost or effort, I at least like to see why something is a bad idea sometimes, because half the time there's no issue.

The diameter of this coupler is going to be like 2", compared to the 3/4" of stock. If I cut some steel ribs to slide into the splines before I epoxy, I think it would probably be fine for stock performance.

Since it's not much to try it out, and at least get the motor spinning and all that stuff figured out, I might still try it.



> If couplers are not well-aligned and of appropriate materials, they won't last long, and failure will be spectacular and potential dangerous if the driveshaft starts whipping round under the car when the coupler fails.


That will not be possible with my build.

I should be more clear. The original driveshaft is going to slide into the original transmission tailshaft housing, onto the transmission output shaft. Like so:










Then, I am going to try to mate that transmission shaft to the motor shaft.

The transmission tail housing is going to mount to the back of the motor somehow (drill bolts, it's a 1.5" thick plate of steel).

Here's the motor next to a full transmission, imagine getting rid of the bell housing and the gear housing, and just putting the grey tail housing with a bit of a spacer ring, to the motor:










So, if my coupler shatters, it will mean that the motor is no longer spinning the transmission output shaft, but the driveshaft is still contained by 2" inside the tail housing and the tail housing still bolted to the motor. The only part that fails will be the coupling itself.

I'd consider that a "soft" fail with the consequences similar to a flat tire or running out of gas.



> I'd suggest you call around local machine shops, hot rod or 4x4 shops that modify driveshafts, and they can probably make you a custom driveshaft with U-joints matching the splines you need.


This is definitely the right way to do it.

I will almost certainly not be doing that. At least not at first, because, the weak point in my driveline is the rear end and I may want to replace it all later anyway. My goal has been "Get it rolling, make it nicer later", since feature creep kills my projects.

Not a lot of custom driveshaft shops open right now anyway.


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## dedlast (Aug 17, 2013)

Matt, 
I looked at your motor spec sheet again and I'm wondering if you have considered using the "non-drive" end shaft. It looks like a 1-1/8" 17 tooth spline. I was able to find a hub with that configuration out of Australia, https://www.hydairdrives.com.au/ part number 94/50027. No idea on price.

I also found a tractor clutch but that was ~$170, so not useful.

Just a thought.
Bill


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

dedlast said:


> I looked at your motor spec sheet again and I'm wondering if you have considered using the "non-drive" end shaft.


Briefly entertained it, yes.

Few reasons not to:

1 - It puts all the cables and sensors farther away from the engine bay if I do that. And into the tighter (narrower) area of the trans tunnel where there's no room for them, or room to service them. I am limited by how far I can shove the motor, by the size of the trans tunnel so, this would mean moving the motor further back.

2 - Currently, not even sure it has that under there, there is a metal cover over it and I'm not sure how to take it off.

3 - The face doesn't have anything to grab onto. The big shaft side has a massive plate. The smaller shaft side is mostly fins.

4 - Cooling would work best if the open face of the fins shovelled air through and out to the opposite side.

5 - It's not future proof. I may some day upgrade the rest of the driveline and want the beefier splines in use.

You are correct that it would be a lot easier to find a matching spline though. I probably have dozens of cheaper options.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

New milestone: I have now spent as much avoiding buying a coupler, to avoid buying a coupler, without having spent enough to actually make a coupler yet.

Well, time for an update on a series of failures that may someday lead to a success. Half of this is just so I have this written somewhere, it might not be that interesting.

There are 3 sub-projects to this, in increasing complexity:

1 - Make a mold of the driveshaft splines
2 - Make a furnace to melt the copper into a copper clone of the driveshaft.
3 - Make an EDM machine to use the copper clone to cut a female coupler out of steel.

Mold-making:

Almost complete failure. I have now attempted to make 10 or so molds.










Plaster of Paris works okay, but it's fragile and you're supposed to have 2 degrees of draft angle. I have zero degrees of draft and a bajillion grippy sections (cylindrical shaft with splines). This almost always results in the mold gripping the shaft too well and shattering the plaster when I try to take it off. I've let it sit 2 hours, overnight, and 4 days. None held up.

I've tried mixing Plaster of Paris with sand and bentonite clay (kitty litter ground up using an immersion blender), for extra rigidity and temperature handling at the expense of surface finish. It also shattered taking it off.

I tried using green casting sand (sand with bentonite clay). The "right way" to cast copper. This is impossible, because you have to pack the sand around the object, you can't pack it first. The motor shaft is in a recessed hole, there's no way to pack sand around it. I tried anyways, not even partial success, there is no way. Loose sand won't hold, pre-packed sand won't crush. Neither sand will release even when I have an otherwise unuseable mold, even if I liberally cornstarch the splines and the sand surface. This is a dead end without having access to pack sand.










Furnace:

As earlier, a stove burner won't work. This is the garage equivalent of those Pinterest-mom drain cleaning or home remedy ideas, everyone keeps repeating it, no one knows what they're talking about.

I dug out both of my carbon arc torches that I've never used and bought some 3/16" and 5/16" carbon gouging rods (on clearance, 60% off). I'm not gouging, but no one has used carbon arc torches since oxy/ace has been around. Copper-coated carbon should just be copper-coated carbon, gouging is just when you direct air parallel to it to blow the molten metal away. I don't have a gouging head anyway, so should be fine.

Short vid:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toGhu-bXvN4

My idea was to keep the steel crucible and waft the arc up and down around it like you would with a torch. I could not get my rods to light. They'd spark, but never light. I tried for an hour to feather it every possible way. I was moving the tips by a millimetre at a time, no luck. Even with an arc welder designed specifically for dual use as a carbon arc torch (you flip the ground clamp around, slide the stinger onto one side, and the clamp itself becomes the spring tension between the "V" to light the arc). I could get an arc, but only momentary. Not sure what I'm doing wrong.

Another short vid showing the torch, which I had to un-repair the previous owner's repair (drill out one side to fit carbons):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apj_EL-rMQQ

I cut up and machined a cavity and access holes into some fire brick. Normally fire brick is how you insulate your furnace walls, inside of which you put a crucible. I just used the fire brick itself as the crucible, which will consume it but, I'm not doing this 20 times. I replaced the carbon arc torch with a pair of jumper cables and lit the arc inside. It was so hot it turned the ceiling of the furnace into glass in about 3 seconds, which then dripped into the copper below. It's plenty hot, just not focused. I tried 5 different things and none worked, and it blew the breaker every 3 seconds so I gave up and took the lid off.

Still kept blowing breakers. Without a lid, no way to add energy fast enough to keep the copper molten without blowing the breaker.

So I stepped my game up. I took 3 beyond-junk car batteries and hooked them up in series. Then put a 15A car charger on Battery #1, and hooked my flux core welder (27.6v output) to Battery #2 and Battery #3 in series (13.8v per battery, about right). Was about 45v open circuit, 36v loaded. The idea being, the batteries would help pick up some of the load. I could leave them to charge for a half hour, and then use that stored energy combined with the welder and charger, and buy enough time to liquefy the copper while having higher average power output than the 1800w I could get from the breaker.

Still couldn't get the arcs to light for more than a couple seconds.

I changed methods. I stuck the positive carbon directly against the copper and then hovered the negative over top. Instant success. And I mean instant. Anywhere that arc moved, the 10g scrap copper melted like it was made of butter. Took seconds to melt the copper wires into a pool. I was having so much fun messing around with it heating and cooling that I eventually started blowing breakers again because the batteries were too low.

For scale: An entire 100 amp service to a home is 240v * 100a = 24,000 watts. A 50A outlet for your welder can be at most half that. 12,000 watts. A 15a 120v breaker is only 1800 watts.

Starter batteries are 12v, ~700 CCA. So, more like 1000A at room temp. 12 * 1000 = 12,000 watts per battery. 3 of them makes 36,000 watts. 50% more than the entire power grid to a house. 20x the max power of my welder. Even if they were underperforming junk batteries... ludicrous amounts of power.

I eventually just ignored the breaker being blown and ran the batteries into the ground to keep the arc lit, until the copper was almost boiling.










I poured it into the only mold that survived, the awful one I described in my previous post that was super wet and didn't transfer detail well. I'd only baked it dry for a few hours.

.... surprisingly, it worked. I'll make some videos of it when they have better context.










I'll have to run it through a bandsaw to cut off the top half, and, it doesn't matter how ugly the inside looks, it'll be getting mounted to an arbor regardless. Just the outside profile matters. Voids and such in the finish don't matter either, as I'll be plunging the whole thing through the workpiece.

I've been told you cannot cast copper in plaster of paris, it breaks down. Mine held up fine. The only errors were errors in how crappy of a mold it originally was.

My copper might have glass dissolved in it. Hard to tell. I didn't use enough copper either.

I'm 100% satisfied with my ability to melt copper in the "furnace" (an open bowl shape cut into firebrick). If my furnace survived (debatable, it started to crack) I just need a better mold to pour it into.

The current copper clone might be usable with some cleanup to make sure there's no extra material (extra material will cause extra material to be removed, and thus be missing teeth). It's ugly, but the electrode wears perhaps 10% as fast as the workpiece, so, it might be enough.


... (Cont'd)...


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

... (cont'd)...

EDM Machine:

This is pretty simple. When you bring two electrical contacts together, they spark. A tiny dust fleck of material is vaporized from the positive side. But, only when the electricity first "lands" there. So you want to keep starting and stopping the spark as fast as possible. Around 5,000-20,000 times per second. The arc will happen whenever the two surfaces happen to be closest, which jumps around because you keep flicking a spec of dust off of what used to be the closest point.

You can do this with transistors and brains, telling it to start and stop. Or you can just control the rate that a capacitor charges, which eventually has enough voltage to ionize the fluid, jump the gap, get discharged, not have enough to sustain an arc, and charge up again. I went with the capacitor.

Old Popular Mechanics articles have shown this back in the 60s, when GTs were being made. It's just DC voltage to a light bulb (resistor) and a capacitor.










2 kinds of EDM: Wire EDM, and Sinker EDM.

Wire EDM is like a spark-erotion bandsaw that cuts through material and carves out a shape. That takes computer control. The electrode is very fine copper wire and, what survives out the other end isn't reusable. Wire EDM typically uses a trickle of distilled water as the bath.

Sinker EDM is just an electrode you slowly lower into the workpiece, and it copies the shape. The electrode is typically graphite. Sinker EDM typically uses kerosene as the bath. I'm building a sinker.

I tried using tap water on a test piece, lowing copper pipe into 1/8" steel. It sucked.

I've seen plans for EDM machines for over a decade, they usually have computerized stepper motors to control the sinking electrode, having it regularly back up to wash the swarf away and prevent it from sticking. I just used my drill press to lower it.

About every 3rd spark made the electrode stick to the workpiece. There's an instant visual indicator of this, because your light bulb stays lit rather than flickering. Then you have to back it off, then lower it again.

Also, because tap water is conductive, it electrolyzed the water, splitting it into H2 and O2. O2 goes to the positive side, forcibly rusting my steel workpiece. I had a frothy foam of rust that interfered with the sparking and soon rusted up the whole tank.










So I bought some Kerosene. 20,000 electrical arcs per second, in a tub of kerosene? Apparently, unlike the instant bomb this would be with gasoline, with kerosene this is safe. You can throw a lit match into a pool of kerosene (or diesel) and it won't light.

It worked... poorly, but it worked. I ran it for 1 hour before stopping to inspect.










My copper was cut crooked, so that's why it's a semi-circle, that half has always been closest to the workpiece.

The whole tank was black with iron oxide, I had no filter. I had a small pump, but my "small" marine pump pumps a gallon every 3 seconds. I don't want a kerosene fire hose, so I didn't use it.










I started off with perhaps 5 hz, and ended up feathering the gap better and achieving maybe 50-100hz. Not the optimal 10,000-ish, so it was very slow. Mostly due to setup I think. My capacitor timing is right, I just have no flushing of the worksurface so it regularly sticks and fails.


How much material did I remove?

Quick maths:

3/4" semicircle = 1.1775" length.
0.050" wide track.
0.050" deep, but in a V shape, so, average 0.025" deep.

Total material removed: 0.00147 cubic inches in an hour (24 cubic mm/hour).

In a proper setup, I should be doing 14-29mm^3/min that rate per minute, not per hour, but it's roughly in the same ballpark that my frequency is off by, and the first 30-40 minutes were much worse.

You can just add more power, 10x much even, to a point, as long as there's enough surface area that sparks are spread out.

How much do I need to remove? 

After drilling out the coupler to the minor diameter of the splines (mechanical removal is thousands of times faster), I would sink the copper into the workpiece so only the splines themselves have to be spark eroded. On my splines, the major diameter is ~41mm (1320mm^2) and minor diameter is 37mm (1075mm^2). Sanity check, that's 4mm difference total, which is 2mm deep teeth on each side, seems about right. And call it a 50% that needs to be removed between those two diameters to create splines. (1320mm^2 - 1075mm^2) / 2 = 122.5 mm^2 of area needing to be cut. Or, 122.5 cubic mm per mm of depth.

If I want at least an inch (25mm) of depth, that's 3000+ cubic mm to be cut (1/5th of a cubic inch). I probably have 2 inches of splines if I want to cover them completely, but, let's no go crazy.

At my current average (really, worst-case) rate of 24mm^3/hour, that's 125 hours, or 5-ish days of cutting. At a proper rate, that would be about 2 hours of cutting. At a fast rate with aggressive settings and poor finish, 20 minutes.

I'm fine standing at a drill press feathering a cut for 2 hours, but I'm not standing there for 5 days. So, the viability of this depends on how good I can get my setup compared to a small commercial tap-burning rig.

...

So, plan moving forward:

Mold: Be less ambitious in depth, try to get 1/4" deep mold instead of 1/2" or 3/4", and hope it survives. I can make multiples of these and just swap them out if they get consumed by the EDM. Stick with plaster of paris. If that doesn't work,switch to green sand, which means finding a way to pack around the splines. I think I can add 2 more steps and create a low-temp mold first. Make an epoxy copy of the shaft (or a heated PVC copy), then melt plastic or pour expoxy into that female mold (with some kind of oil or release so it doesn't stick to the sides), then use the plastic male clone to create a proper packed green sand casting that can handle copper temps.

Furnace: Add more copper next time, see if firebrick survived, consider switching back to the steel crucible buried in sand, power isn't really a limit anymore.

EDM: I really want to avoid building a proper jig, with sliders and stepper motors and current sensing with computer controlled reversing. It might be inescapable to have to do that. That's a whole project in itself, ordering parts, troubleshooting, programming, etc. I'll try adding a pump, increasing capacitor size, and seeing if I can burn fast enough without doing anything else. I'll need to filter the kerosene too, coffee filter maybe, not sure. I have to remove 125x as much material, and the kerosene was already ink black.

... I'm almost content having experimented with the 3 side projects and just want to go buy a proper coupler now. The appeal was "Maybe it'll work easily, and I don't mind wasting a little time to find out". But I'm there now. Mixed results, and patience for side projects is wearing thin. A hacksaw would have had my splines cut by now.


Here's the "expense report":

Kitty Litter: $7.98
50lbs Play Sand: $8.20
Strainer: $3.50
Plaster of Paris: $6.47
Cornstarch Baby Powder: $3.47
Containers: (free, had some)

Mold total: $29.62

Black pipe & plate: (free, had some)
Black pipe cap (didn't use): $2.12
Firebrick: $7.50
Flower pot (didn't use): $2.50
Stainless tongs: $1.25
3/16" Gouging Rods: $8.33
5/15" Gouging Rods: $9.13
Borax (sprinkle into molton metal to clean out oxides): $5.47
Car batteries, chargers, jumper cables: (free, had some)

Furnace total: $36.30

2 Gal Distill water (didn't use): $4.00
Tubs: $5.25
Lightbulbs: $4.25
1/4" tubing: $4.99
3/4" tubing: $5.45
Kerosene: $14.98
Pumps: (free, had some)

EDM Total: $38.92

Coupler experiments: $104.84 + tax
Cost of a coupler: $105+ shipping.


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## tylerwatts (Feb 9, 2012)

Wow this is very impressive stuff Matt. I love your inginuity! Looking forward to seeing your progress.

Cheers
Tyler


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

Well, it's now been a year since I first arrived in Arizona and saw my GTs and begun working on them (cash already changed hands but I didn't legally own them for a couple more days after that).

A year in review... (no car stuff, safe to skip)

A bit bittersweet. I started what I thought would be a fun summer project. I had a lot of naysayers that said "Ha, you won't even get it driving in a year!!" which, as of today, have their moment in the sun. They were right.

Partially it's that things were more work than I thought, they always are, that's okay. Partly it's been that I chose to do other things for a few months, I'm okay with that too, that's why I did other things. But mostly it's been that I don't have a garage of my own, and I work long days 7 days a week. I'm still in the mindset of "I'll do that in the evening/I'll work on that on the weekend". Just, mentally that's how life normally has gone right from kindergarden through college then career. My brain subconsciously still books that "work on it on your next day off" time even though it's not there. It still gets me into trouble overcommitting because I still instinctively feel like I'm no more than 5 days away from a couple days off. That there's evenings and weekends to look forward to doing stuff. But for me now, by evening it's too late to make noise, and I've only taken 1 day off since I left Arizona with my cars last year.

So that's been a disappointment, not just because it didn't get done and I haven't been able to enjoy it, but because some of the choices I've made in my build were in line with "cheap, easy, summer project", where the goal was to have it done soon, not better. Shitty project done quick, that's the tradeoff I was okay with. But if I was stepping back and planning a 1-2 year build, I'd have upgraded some of those efforts and made different choices. I'm now going to end up with the same shitty end result, but that took me a medium amount of time to complete. Which is also my biggest source of frustration on the project, juggling all the options between slapped-together and done-right and never knowing how much more time to spend making something better. I get builder's block for days at a time.

On the flip side, part of the reason I was gunning for a summer project is that I've had a few years now of nose to the grindstone and I was burning out, and I wanted something creative to put effort into long term and look forward to. Conversation has been dead for me, "So what've you been up to lately?", "Nothing, I work." being the literal truth, have nothing to contribute because nothing changed. Not just socially, personally too. So in that respect it's been a success. Not as much of a success as driving the car and making little upgrades as I go, but, better than another year of doing nothing but work and get fatter.

We're more than half way through spring, and I'd really like it to be drivable by the end of summer this year. I've slacked most of the last couple months, wanted a break after I mostly-finished the nightly welding march.

Anyway, enough blah. I did have a bunch of car updates I might get to tomorrow, will save those for another post.


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## tylerwatts (Feb 9, 2012)

Keep at it Matt, you'll have a nice build and a great project to keep improving over the years too. We all get things blocking our progress and it's part of the journey.

I look forward to your updates tomorrow.

Cheers
Tyler


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

Not having immediate success with buying a coupler, nor casting, nor EDM, I've spent some time laying out my options. Organizing my thoughts, not much progress to show.

1 - Hire a machine shop to fabricate a coupler.
2 - Fabricate a coupler myself, using a machine shop.
3 - Buy a Massey-Ferguson tractor PTO clutch to match the motor side, weld it to something for the transmission shaft.
4 - Continue with EDM experiments.
5 - Grind off/fill in the splines, make a taper-lock coupler.
6 - Weld the motor shaft directly to the transmission shaft.
7 - Wait for the forklift yard to maybe have a matching coupler.
8 - Carve a coupler by hand with a saw and file.
9 - Cast a coupler from aluminum or zamak.

And in detail why/why not:

*1 - Hire a machine shop to fabricate a coupler.*

- It'll get done right.
- It'll be the most expensive.
- It'll probably take some time.


*2 - Fabricate a coupler myself, using a machine shop.*

- I have access to a machine shop with $50,000 of tools. A giant lathe, a manual milling machine, a Tormach CNC milling machine, etc. I'm trained on all the machinery, I can let myself in 24/7 and use whatever equipment I want, make as much noise as I want. No one else will be there at night I'll have the place to myself.
- It's cheating, on a simple project, to go use $50,000 of industrial machinery. Even more so to throw a piece in a machine and click a button and let the computer do it (which I could do, like, tomorrow). In as much as my project might be educational, this is the antithesis of what anyone else could get done at home. It's like commuting in a helicopter.
- I used to spend a lot of time there, don't have time to be there regularly anymore, and don't really want to remember how much I miss it.


*3 - Buy a Massey-Ferguson tractor PTO clutch to match the motor side, weld it to something for the transmission shaft.*

- Ruining something brand new just for the splines.
- Kind of expensive.
- Still only a partial solution, still have to kludge the transmission half.
- Probably won't be very deep, (might need 2 couplers).


*4 - Continue with EDM experiments.*

- My EDM machine has been on pause for 10 years, it would be nice to finish it and use it.
- I'm most interested in this.
- I've already sunk a bunch of time into it.
- Casting hasn't gone well but is becoming passible.
- Solution might not be sufficiently accurate. EDM has small, but existant air gap between electrode and workpiece by function of the process itself. EDM can be about 0.0005" accurate (half-thou), but that would be around a circumference so 0.001" total. Automotive fit is usually around 0.001" for sliding parts, so I would have to be at the limit of the technology on a home-built machine. This isn't a rigidity constraint like on a milling machine, it's a configurable attribute related to voltage, current and frequency, but the construction of my plunge die has to be within those tolerances for that to matter. Alternatively I could undersize my electrode to compensate, but that means I can't just cast an image of the shaft, I'd have to machine it smaller, making the whole process moot.
- I risk going off on a tangent project that will sink too much time (for example, as it already has).


*5 - Grind off/fill in the splines, make a taper-lock coupler.*

- A taper-lock is just a barrel of aluminum with a narrow slot in it and some bolts to squeeze that gap (nearly) shut.
- It's apparently as strong as a weld.
- It's proven strong enough for DIY EVs in the past, it's the common machined solution.
- I don't like damaging the motor splines because I can't undo that later.
- I could fill in the splines with JB Weld and leave it large, it's just surface to squeeze on.
- 2" aluminum bar in short lengths is probably as much as a PTO clutch would cost, and I doubt my machining ability with steel.
- I could also/instead cut a keyway and use a keyed shaft. But I presume there's a reason that keyed shafts are never used like this even though that's simpler and easier.


*6 - Weld the motor shaft directly to the transmission shaft.*

- Shaft is permanently damaged if I screw it up.
- Can I create a jig to weld it sufficiently square and centered?
- Solution in general is pretty permanent, most other solutions I can just abandon and try something else with no consequence.
- It limits serviceability or making other changes.
- This has always been my backup plan, and tempting.


*7 - Wait for the forklift yard to maybe have a matching coupler.*

- Forklift yard mentioned they have 2 more machines like the one I took the motor from, that they're combining into one. They'd pull the gearbox for me so I could recover the matching splined shaft. Though they're not sure when, or if they have a buyer for that. Or time to do it.
- This has been my backup plan for a while, knowing it might be "a month" or more, but, it's been 6 weeks not no call yet so, probably won't happen.
- I have no idea how long I might wait for that to happen.
- Is still only half a solution.


*8 - Carve a coupler by hand with a hack saw and file.*

- Seems like the worst choice, but it's so, so simple, and unlike welding, not a permanent commitment. It just takes time. And honestly not that much time compared to fancier solutions.
- I've done it before, and it worked then.
- I hate this.


*9 - Cast a coupler from aluminum or zamak.*

- Instead of casting the female image in a plaster mold, then pouring copper into this mold to create a male image, then using the male to EDM out a matching female, instead just cast the female directly.
- Make a silicone mold of the splines, use that only as a shape to pack a high-temp sand mold, pour metal into the sand mold.
- Aluminum has a lower melting point than copper, so if I could cast copper I can easily cast aluminum.
- Zamak (Zinc/Aluminum) is stronger than bare aluminum, melts at a lower temperature, and is considered "zero machining" surface finish quality.


...


As much as I hate throwing away my casting and EDM efforts of the last 6 weeks, and I'm confident it'll eventually work, I'm worried that I'll get it working but it still won't be good enough regardless of my effort because of physical limits. I guess it's time to put my EDM project back on the shelf.

I think I'm going to try casting a Zamak coupler. A car guy's suggestion of using silicone mold to cast tin (no good) gave me the idea that, the only reason I can't cast a female directly is because I don't have a female mold. A plaster mold wouldn't survive being used as an image, but silicone would be fine to pack sand around and then remove.

If that fails, Plan B is an aluminum taper-lock.

If that fails, Plan C is to just weld it up solid. Or braze it so there's less warpage.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

Onto less boring things, progress and pics!

*Casting Progress:*

- I cleaned up the other half of my borrowed garage, and built another pair of 8' long 2x4 shelves. So much room, for activities!

- The very last thing I did was move some cheap plastic wall-hanging shelves. Behind which I discovered... a 240v 50a outlet. Perfect timing, as I'm done pretty much all my welding with my crappy 120v 15a welder. *sigh*

- I finally got 2 molds to turn out decently. The secret was to be less ambitious about depth (1/4-3/8"), and, to mix yellow fiberglass insulation into the plaster so that it wouldn't crack across the whole mold when removing it (it worked).

- New casting (right) turned out great. On the outside. I forgot to pre-heat the mold so, steam boiled out of the mold when I poured, and volcano'd all the copper away. The surface is all that's left. Which is fine for EDM, I'm only using the surface. Surface finish is also great, only needs light touchup:










- Ruined my steel crucible by letting it get too hot. Top 1/3 of my copper poured out into the sand, bottom 2/3 is kind of stuck in a furance I can't use now. Oops.










- No problem, I'll go back to using my firebrick directly. Oops. I liquefied the firebrick into glass and then burned through it too:










- It probably makes sense if I explain that I upgraded my carbon arc furnace before this, it puts out a lot more heat now. Probably close to 500a at 24v.

None of this matters, since I probably won't be doing EDM. I might be using the furnace still though.


*Brakes:*

- Let's have a closer look at the master cylinder.










- What about the brake booster?










I might have wrecked it, trying to unscrew the vacuum attachment. It now sloppily spins (but didn't come out of the metal enclosure).

- Front brakes apart.










Stripped one of the j-tube fittings (no problem, I'll screw it back together using vice grips, and just always disconnect the other end of the rubber hose in the future instead). Found broke the cross-shaped brake pad clamp on one side. Pistons okay on one side, other side the rubber was cracked.

- A transformation!










How did I restore them so well? I didn't. I bought them out of the local parts co-op, recently donated from another member who wanted to use them but upgraded to a big brake package instead. Ended up being free because of parts I've contributed that I didn't need (like a good gas tank from a desert vehicle).

I had no interest or skill in refurbishing brake parts so I just paid other GT guy to do it for me. Great value and peace of mind on something I don't care about doing and just want done.

My old reservoir had a matchbook-sized hole in it, and when we tried to pull it off, it half shattered, half crumbled in his hands. Desert car - win on the metal, lose on the rubber and plastic. Was junk anyway, but, yeah.

- My brake fluid reservoir cap was also cracked, so I took it to the junkyard and practised on 30 or so vehicles until I found one that matched. '04 and '07 Mazda 3 had screw caps (not tabbed caps) that seems to fit perfectly. $2.











*Windows and Doors:*

- I spend a couple days reading old threads about converting the Opel GT crank mechanism to power windows. Consensus seems to be 1996-2000 Honda Civic sedan, front window regulators are a good match. They are known to be durable unlike other brands.










Despite so many threads, there's not a consistent write up, nor labelled diagram, and conjecture is mixed in with proven results so it's hard to know what to door use. I'll try to write an article about that if I can colimate the advice correctly.

In brief:

- Flaw of original Opel mech is that both cables go to bottom, which is a hard angle to follow.
- Honda Accord openers both go to bottom, hence the Civic ones which form a bow-shape instead are maybe better. They're also close to the correct length.
- Using the actual slider seems to be abandoned. Even the Civic ones are a couple inches too long and arch is wrong and the attachment points are wrong. So instead you remove the slider from the donors and mount the motor and cables to the original slider mechanism.
- It might not actually matter what regulator you use because of this, I think this might be Xerox advice where each person copies the person before but have lost the context of why. Like the recipe that tells you to cut the chicken in half before putting it into the roaster, you eventually discover is because grandma's roaster didn't fit a whole chicken, it has nothing to do with improving taste, spice coverage, moisture, etc. 
- The cables end up getting cut anyway (do not let them go loose, hold them with tape or they'll tangle in the spring mechanism) and then just clamped into the Opel slide mechanism.
- Opel GT windows get very tight towards the top. These little motors are weak and barely get the job done. Doors are often crooked without you noticing. The rubber sliders that the glass contacts is adjustable and many people don't know this. There is a procedure for this to help if needed.
- Maybe you should just get motors from bigger vehicles with heavier windows instead of Honda Civics, since the slider and cable length no longer actually matter, no one has ever re-used the slider mechanism anyway.
- These things are no cheaper from a junkyard than they are brand new. So just buy new ones.

- Quarter-panel automated window openers. From 1996-2000 Dodge Caravans. Or, 2000+ Caravans, but they'll be backwards so you'll have to flip left and right.










Nothing fancy to access them either just yank the plastics out. Two 10mm bolts hold the actuators on. $5 apiece at my junkyard.

Caravan switches are lighted switches, DPDT momentaries. Mine were $15 for the driver's assembly and $5/switch for the passenger. $15 extra for the wiring harness (I should have just cut it off a few inches after the plug, would've been free).

Many vehicles have shielded, press-fit rubber connectors to the doors. Caravan ones kinda suck, they're very short. The Civic ones were quite long, comparatively. Didn't look at enough vehicles to recommend or buy any particular one for being a good match to the GT.


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## tylerwatts (Feb 9, 2012)

Nice work Matt

Cheers
Tyler


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## Duncan (Dec 8, 2008)

Why are you messing with a brake booster on such a lightweight vehicle?


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## Electrovair (Jun 16, 2015)

Hi Matt,

Who would you be cheating if you took the midnight machine shop option? You're not cheating me. If I had access to a machine shop and CNC tools I would be overjoyed. 

I get that you'll get lonesome for it after you're done but seems like a small price.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

Duncan said:


> Why are you messing with a brake booster on such a lightweight vehicle?


Because you need it 

I asked. Guys have lost boost and said it's terrifying.

If I was designing it to not use a booster, maybe I would skip it, but from what I understand the master cylinder would have to be different, to deal with pressures that my foot can apply.

I think we went over this earlier in this thread somewhere 



Electrovair said:


> Who would you be cheating if you took the midnight machine shop option? You're not cheating me. If I had access to a machine shop and CNC tools I would be overjoyed.


I think I wrote about it earlier. I recall from my childhood, resentment from seeing "simple" projects on TV that took thousands of dollars of dedicated tools to make.

Part of building it is a challenge, so, just throwing money at one of the most challenging parts, or, throwing expensive tools at it is... I dunno... anti-inspiring? And not that my goal is entirely be inspiring, I just want a fun car, but I recall my resentment towards others for accomplishing things only because of their resources, not their resourcefulness.



> I get that you'll get lonesome for it after you're done but seems like a small price.


No, it's worse than that.

I tend to be an all or nothing person. And for the years I was involved there, every piece of machinery was moved and set up by me. Every worktable. Every policy. Every improvement. Probably 80% of new people that joined got their tour and introduction from me. Anytime there was something to do, if I didn't do it myself I tried to be part of the group that did it. We quintupled in size the time I was there. It was a big part of my life.

I miss it, I miss my friends, I miss helping others on their projects, I miss teaching, I miss being a part of it. But, it's not the first place I've volunteered, and it tends to follow a similar path. When I'm volunteering, for the years I'm there, I never get around to doing personal stuff. And, I can't spend all my time there, I work 7 days a week, 12+ hours a day, because I tend to toggle 100% on or 100% off. I'm miserable with hour-by-hour work:leisure balance that most people have, so my work:leisure is binge-based, a few years at a time. Even on a social scale, people that know me know it's normal for me to be really social for a few months, and then drop off the map for a few months and talk to no one, back and forth. 

There is zero chance of me showing up and not getting sucked back into being there, or being miserable because I'm not there more often.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

Small bits of progress. Haven't been in the shop much and when I do go I mostly sit around and am not sure what to do. Procrastinating, finding other things to do. Pulling parts at the junkyard for other people's vehicles instead of my own, working on theirs instead of mine.

I think I've stalled on the coupler for as much time now as I spent welding the two whole bodies together, still without a good solution.


Coupler Progress:

I made a new spline mold, V2. Used up the entire rest of the silicone tube, figuring I'd used half of it the previous time. Oops, nope, I had enough for the new mold and a tennis ball amount of excess. Oh well. Nice thick walls.










Detail is not as good as V1. I think I overdid it on the corn starch. It has a sandy texture to it. And it didn't release on the bottom of one spline:










Not a big deal, it means my plaster will have extra material, and I can use a knife to shave it back to the right size.

Plaster copies came out okay, few bubbles. Tried vibrating them out using a surplus, err, back massager from the night table, only moderately effective:










Melt-wise... I thought I had lots of cast zinc, pounds and pounds of it. I tested it by leaving little slivers on a stove burner and seeing if they melt. They did, but larger pieces would not. I have aluminum, not zinc or Zamak. I think I want Zamak (almost as strong as cast iron, self-lubricating, stovetop melting temperatures), so now I have to find or buy some from a scrapyard. If not, I can't stovetop melt aluminum, I'd need the furnace.

And knowing I'd be pouring the whole coupler at once, I was worried about having enough battery capacity for the arc furnace. So I called NAPA and asked if I could buy some of their core batteries back for the price of the core. They said sure, and will even let me drop them back off when I'm done and get my core back. Renting batteries for free I suppose.










Out of the 8 I bought, I think 5 were still good. Furnace-wise I think I'm good.

Crucible-wise, I'm waiting for the thrift stores to re-open to pick up a stainless or cast iron pot (and maybe some zamak bathroom fixtures to melt).

I guess I've never even taken a good picture of what I'm trying to do.










I have to do some modification to the transmission output shaft, but how far I turn it down I'm not sure. One consistent diameter. If the motor shaft protrudes 2", I guess I should have 2" of grab length on the transmission shaft. But in my head, the tail housing and motor were almost touching. now that I look at it, they're separated by 4". So, now I need some giant case to enclose all of it, not just a mating plate.

And at that point, am I even saving any weight or length compared to having the whole transmission?


Lots of seemingly-little thing I need to figure out how to actually accomplish. Usually I make progress by just picking one thing and heading in that direction, but there's so many things that all have to be right at the same time:

- To make the coupler, I now have a plaster form for the motor's side. I don't have a form for the transmission side, which could just be a tube, but it has to be the exact size of the transmission shaft, which I should grind down first.

- Then, how do I grind it down consistently without a lathe? Just bench grinder with angle iron to keep it square?

- If my hole on the transmission side of the coupler is wrong, do I have a drill bit big enough to enlarge it? Do I have a chuck large enough to hold it? How do I keep it perfectly centered?

- When I'm making my casting and connecting the plaster splines to the plaster tube, how do I make it centered within driveshaft-required precision (I presume at least 0.001")?

- Can you combine a splined coupler with a taper-lock coupler, or is that going to create too much of a stress riser wherever the slot stops and encourage it to split?

- I haven't even tested if the motor works yet. I haven't finished wiring up my inverter to test it. All this work might be for a motor that I end up not using.


I think the best thing to do is perhaps make the coupler with *only* the motor side. The rest of it where the transmission shaft goes will be temporarily solid.

Then I can slip the coupler onto the motor, and just use the motor itself as a lathe. I think I use a scribe to find the exact center, then center punch it, center-drill it, then set up some books under a cordless drill (flipping pages is a 0.005" adjustment). A still drill bit should be self-centering on a rotating shaft, I think? It'll pull itself perfectly through the middle?

As usual, everything is more complicated than it seems. Tempted to just go back to welding the shaft and being done with it.


Misc:

Brake lines and fittings arrived. Went with the teflon coated one because it was the only 3/16" line on Amazon Prime. $17 line, $13 fitting.










Snuck in at the tail end of the Covid sale at the Opel shop for about $100 of stuff:
- Door bumpers
- Hood bumpers
- Steering rack boots
- Master cylinder reservoir seals
- Master cylinder hose
- Rear transmission seal


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## electro wrks (Mar 5, 2012)

I haven't checked all of your post for this option. If the outside diameter of the splines on the motor shaft are machined true, you might be able to fit a taper bushing coupling (such as a Taper-Lock design) directly on the splines. The bushing housing could have a flange that would bolt-up to a flanged yoke of a U-joint. The splines could(you would have to check for this) provide enough "bite" into the bushing so a key and keyways would not be necessary.
The flanged housing could be made from a taper bushing chain sprocket-new or used. Some machining would be required to match it and align it to the U-joint yoke flange.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

electro wrks said:


> The bushing housing could have a flange that would bolt-up to a flanged yoke of a U-joint


I can't go right to the U-Joint.

1 - I can't get the motor that far back into the trans tunnel.
2 - I would like to use the existing speedometer, which runs on a worm gear in the tail housing of the transmission.

But, it's an option to just get or make or modify the driveshaft. Someone mentioned it's only about $100 to show up at a driveshaft shop with the pieces and tell them what length it needs to be.


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## Duncan (Dec 8, 2008)

Re the speedo

I bought a GPS speedo - eliminates all of the issues - not actually legal but I found one that did not say "GPS" on the front so nobody knows

About $50


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## electro wrks (Mar 5, 2012)

Or drive a speedo set-up off the non-drive end of the motor, if it still has the shaft exposed.


We're just concerned that in your drive to get back to basics, the next step will be all of the work of prospecting for copper or zinc ore and smelting it for your casting operation.

Also, have you accounted for dimensional shrinkage as the metal casting cools? Most metals expand and contract at a pretty high, but predictable, rate with temperature differences.
Years ago, I watched some casting pattern makers go about their job. They had this amazing array of measuring tools to use for making casting patterns for various metals. Each measuring tool had is units of measure adjusted to compensate for the cooling shrinkage of the cast metals they were working with. This saved them from having to make a bunch of shrinkage compensation calculations for each pattern they were making.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

Duncan said:


> I bought a GPS speedo - eliminates all of the issues - not actually legal but I found one that did not say "GPS" on the front so nobody knows


Yes, but I like the original speedo. I like mechanical and electromechanical things.

My favorite thing about the GT is the manually operated flip-out headlights. No actuators, it's a lever you have to slam into position.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpPM6NyY6Bc



electro wrks said:


> We're just concerned that in your drive to get back to basics, the next step will be all of the work of prospecting for copper or zinc ore


Are there zinc deposits near me? I called today and can't find a scrapyard that takes zinc. Let alone one that'll sell to me.

The only silver lining is that I do actually enjoy these tangents, just not when I have a goal of getting my car done. I've wanted to do EDM and casting for 10 years now. 



> Also, have you accounted for dimensional shrinkage as the metal casting cools? Most metals expand and contract at a pretty high, but predictable, rate with temperature differences.


Well, the mold is going to be solid, so, it would have to crush the mold in order to shrink down on the internal diameter. Outer diameter I don't care about.

Normally when casting you have to pour extra, as the metal cools it will suck in from that extra material and make a dimple. Since I have an open-faced mold, it's not a big deal, I'll just make it a bit taller than I would have otherwise (or maybe not, who knows, I'll see how the first pour goes).


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## brian_ (Feb 7, 2017)

Duncan said:


> I bought a GPS speedo - eliminates all of the issues - not actually legal but I found one that did not say "GPS" on the front so nobody knows


I agree that this is a sensible solution. Here in Alberta (where both Matt and I are), the Vehicle Equipment Regulation (AR 122/2009) only requires that:


> 76(1) A motor vehicle must have a speedometer that indicates the speed of the vehicle when it is moving forward.


I saw a kit-built car (Lotus Seven style) with a GPS speedo a few years ago; that doesn't prove anything, but the owner had used it for years and not had an issue.

In my motorhome the SuperDuty truck instrument panel is poorly placed for the motorhome driving position, and calibrated for the U.S. market (so the km/h markings are hard to read), and my solution is an ordinary automotive GPS set to the screen which prominently shows speed (in km/h) and mounted in an easily seen position.


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## brian_ (Feb 7, 2017)

electro wrks said:


> Or drive a speedo set-up off the non-drive end of the motor, if it still has the shaft exposed.


That's an excellent idea for a single-ratio drive system like this.

A mechanical speedo drive might be difficult to arrange, even though theoretically possible. An electronic analog speedometer runs on electrical pulses (like a tachometer) and can be driven from a pickup on the motor non-drive end (if exposed), the shaft within the adapter housing, or even the pinion shaft of the axle. It's not mechanical, Matt, but you're building an electric car... 

It should be obvious, but since the motor speed is proportional to the road speed, and the motor controller knows the motor speed, the controller should be able to drive a speedometer. It's the same thing as the tach drive, but with different calibration. A stepper motor could even turn the speedo cable from a tach pulse train with a suitable driver.

Remember the concentric gauge setups, with the tach and speedo as inner and outer meters on a common axis? Maybe only the Honda Prelude had it:








With the fixed single drive ratio, you don't even need two separately driven pointers - a single gauge can be marked with both motor RPM and road speed. The RPM marking are redundant anyway, so the tach face could just be marked with road speed instead of RPM. Will the car have the stock tachometer, and if so how is it to be driven?

I just don't see much point in putting a bunch of effort into supporting a separate speedometer, unless original instrument panel look is for some reason very important.


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## brian_ (Feb 7, 2017)

MattsAwesomeStuff said:


> I like mechanical and electromechanical things.
> 
> My favorite thing about the GT is the manually operated flip-out headlights. No actuators, it's a lever you have to slam into position.


Matt, you would proabably like the BD-5 kit-built aircraft: it has retractable landing gear, which is manually operated (nothing electric, nothing hydraulic, no power assist), with a big lever between the pilot's legs to deploy and retract the gear.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

I'd previously thought my rockers were rust free. Until I poked at a spot of rust in the footwell and discovered structural paint. A bit more poking opened up a gash on each side. Right at the start of the door. There was a dice worth of foam or something plugging the drain channel, and it had rusted on either side of that plug.

So... now I wonder, what happened inside the rocker? How bad is it?






I have no context, I'm not sure if that's bad or not.

I went about half way in.

Not sure what I'd do to clean it either, maybe some fish tape or maybe drill it out and try to stuff a wirewheel in there. Maybe plug the drains and fill it with Evaporust? Maybe just hose it with primer?

Can't clean out the rocker panels without some kind of rod and room to insert it, so, front suspension has to come off. Also, it's the last thing on the car I haven't disassembled yet so, why not. New steering rack boots are in the mail soon anyway.

Spent the day doing some editing, no graphics or voiceover, but, not much to say anyway:






Few things:

- I eventually realize there's nuts below the cross member mounts.
- I eventually figure out that when you're wrench on one side, socket on the other, put the wrench on the side so gravity keeps it put rather than pulls it away.
- Immediately afterwards, no room for a socket on those front nuts. Barely even room for a wrench.
- I wasn't using either of my two big impacts because it was 3am and the neighbors had their motorhome parked across their driveway and power run to it, so I think they had company staying over.
- Second bolt was badly bent, not my doing.
- Fourth nut was a 17mm instead of a 15mm, just to make things difficult.
- There are spacer-like things under the mounts. Authentic or necessary? Hmm.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

Order arrived from the Opel GT supplier in the US. My shopping cart had a few hundred worth of stuff during their Covid sale, but it paired down to $58 by the time I ordered. I expected shipping for 1lb of little things from the US to be like, $10 at most.

I guess I wasn't really thinking, I don't need any of this stuff now and the savings from the Covid sale (after I pared it down) were completely swamped by the shipping costs of ordering now.

Even combining shipping with someone else local, a 4lb box was $48 (US) shipping + $18 CAD in duty. $80 CAD to ship 4lbs to Canada. At least we saved money by splitting that to ~$40 each, but, ugh. This is why many Canadians just ship to the border and then go pick it up themselves. If you don't mind the drive, even small orders cost as much as a tank of gas.

Anyway, mmmm, the smell of new rubbers:

- Steering boots
- Master cylinder reservoir seals
- Master cylinder tube
- Door and hood bumpers
- Transmission output seal










Also, I did a little comparison between the window regulator motors for Honda Civics vs. Dodge Caravans.










If you exclude the bearings and the end caps and all that and compare the actual motor (where it gets its power), the Caravan is about 150% the power of the Civic. So I might swap civic ones for Caravan ones (or any other cable-driven regulator, those are just the two vehicles I've been taking apart lately).

This might also mean it's geared differently and just moves faster rather than more powerfully, but, meh. Either was, beefier motor.


Aluminum Coupler:

- Now that I'm trying to pour a beer-can-sized amount of metal, (verus the golf ball sized amount of copper before), I can't just use firebrick.

- That's annoying, because I don't want to order a graphite crucible just for this little project. I need something cheap that'll hold together above aluminum melting temp.

- I settled on a stainless chaffing tray. This kind of thing:










- I melted some aluminum into it, but the metal was so thin, every time I accidentally bumped the sides with the torch it burned a pencil-sized hole through. Also it had trouble holding temperature. I ran out of battery juice before I had much melted.

- I made my first green-sand mold by mixing sand and ground up kitty litter, packing it into a flower pot around an aerosol can for the shape, and then set my plaster spline at the bottom. Wait, is aluminum heavier than plaster? Is the plaster thing just going to bob up through the metal like a cork? Hmm. Too lazy to anchor it with a bolt.










- I called up my fire extinguisher guy and asked him if he ever has old extinguishers for disposal. He said sure and dropped off a handful. The steel is thick enough that it makes good crucibles.










- I chopped the slimmest extinguisher in half and set it into a coffee tin, filled the sides with sand. Hopefully to give it enough thermal insulation to hold the heat. Melted a bunch more aluminum, but still ran out of juice.










- I noticed the can took like an hour to get hot, so I thought, what if I pre-heat the whole can/sand/crucible on a stovetop for an hour or two first, so that it's pre-heated and won't drain batteries. So I did that.

... and it worked!

Sort of.

Problems:

1 - Normally in a combustion furnace you have gas, or CO2 from the burnt fuel. This sort of replaces oxygen. That's good, because oxygen bonds to the molten metal and creates dross, a waste that has to be scraped off before you pour.

Also, the temperatures are low, 3600'F max for propane (and less by the time it touches anything). The hotter the temperature, the more aggressively oxygen will bond to it.

Also, with a combustion furnace you heat the vessel, not the material, so if a layer of oxide forms above the pool, that's okay.

Also, you heat from the bottom up, so it all melts.

With a carbon arc torch, you have regular air everywhere. You have 36,000'F (!) plasma. You heat the material itself, by conducting through the material, the surface of which is already corroded and doesn't want to conduct so the arc keeps going out unless you poke or stir it, oxidizing a bigger and bigger surface scab of waste material. And, heat has to work its way down via conduction, so the bottom is solid and the top is liquid.

All this adds up to mean that the amount of material wasted is like 30% of what you want to pour. You have to scrape it off right before you pour.


2 - I didn't realize how vacuum-packed sand would get around a smooth steel crucible. I used up every last bit of energy in the batteries melting as much material as I could, to as high a temperature as I could. Finally I'm ready to pour, I scrap the dross away, grab the crucible with pliers... the whole coffee can lifts up. I can't shake it loose.

I end up having to stab the sand with a screwdriver a dozen times to make it let go of the crucible. Meanwhile the lid is off and it's rapidly cooling.

I go to pour, and it's just barely at the melting point now. I dump it into the mold, which boils off a little steam inside the liquid metal, cause it to belch upwards to vent. The top of the molten metal collapses down after the air releases, then belches again. Up then down. A third belch... and it only goes part way back down. The metal is solid.

I tried to add more, just so the weight of the incoming metal would pop the bubble and fill the void, but, the bottom 1/3 of the crucible had turned solid.










The casting filled the mold pretty much to the brim, more than it needed to.

So, I broke out the casting and inspected it. Somehow I never took pics of this. I could tell the balance point was almost exactly at the end of the gear splines, which meant the air bubble on the "solid" half must have been almost the size as the whole splined area.

I cut the top off the "solid" end and revealed...










:/ Yep.

Giant air pocket.

I don't think it's a good idea to just pour more metal into that hole, I think you generally have to cast everything at the same time. You can even see there's a couple layers on top where it burped and froze.

Not bad for a first attempt.

Flipped it over cut the rough sandy texture off, and had a good look at the splined side:










... not bad!

The edge needs to have a taper filed into it, it's still got the saw burrs.

Measuring, it's about 0.003" smaller than the motor shaft. Meaning... must still have some crust on the edge interfering with my calipers, or, it's actually slightly small.

I was able to hammer it on 1/4" pretty easily, letting the motor splines shape the coupler's splines a little bit, but I'd rather not be hammering on the motor.

As a proof of concept, I'd call that a success. This looks to be technically possible to do with aluminum.

...

Zamak Coupler:

- I hate aluminum. It's scummy, surface is crummy, it oxidizes badly, it's weak. It melts at a high temp. I don't want it.

- Die-Cast Zinc/Zamak is as strong as cast-iron, surface finish is great, it pours well, it doesn't oxidize badly, and it melts at stovetop temperatures apparently.

- I rounded up every bit of die-cast zamak I could find. Conduit couplers, bathroom towel rod holders, some V-pulleys from a treadmill CVT, some plumbing fittings, a 2-hole punch, railing brackets, chainlink fence toppers, etc. I might barely have enough zamak to make this work. Hard to find, it seems with improved technology, lots of stuff is cast aluminum these days.

- Bought a cheap fried-egg-sized cast iron pan for a crucible and tested whether zamak actually melts at stovetop temperatures.

- Just barely... barely... on my little portable electric burner, but it does. I test-melted as much zinc as I could fit in that little pan (about 1/3). Seems to work.

- Dumped the zinc into a steel pan to make an ingot for the next time I melt. Zinc is 3x as heavy as aluminum so, I don't trust the plaster spline thing to not cork up without being anchored.


...

Next up, more sand, another mold, and an attempt at a zinc coupler. I'd like that to work instead of aluminum if possible.


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## electro wrks (Mar 5, 2012)

Zinc has an even greater(~1.5X ) rate of thermal expansion compared to aluminum: Thermal Expansion of Metals
So, with your current casting technique, you will cast an even more useless chunk of of metal. You were warned about this problem in a previous post. This was probably figured out ~ 7000 years ago when the first castings were made, and compensated for. You really should do more research on subjects before you waste people's time with your flailing around.

All right, I chewed you out enough. One way to compensate for the shrinkage might be to dip and dry the male spline plaster core piece in watered down plaster (or a more heat resistant material), to slightly build up the size of the core.
I'm not sure about best casting techniques for zinc. With aluminum, the molten metal should be degassed in a vacuum or chemically, and the mold filled from the bottom up. This reduces the porosity and.voids


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

electro wrks said:


> You really should do more research on subjects before you waste people's time with your flailing around.


You dont have to read his posts if you dont want to.

This whole project does sort of seem like an elaborate justification to just play around in the shop; which I totally understand. It does seem to me though, that the constraints you have placed on yourself are going to preclude you from building a functional vehicle. At least in the sense that it will be a dependable little around-town car. I feel like the best analogy I can come up with is that you are trying to MacGuyver an EV. Bubblegum and paperclips can only do so much.

I am very curious how long a motor adapter made of melted-down brik-a-brak could hope to last. Pot-metal is not a material famed for its strength, and there is going to be a lot of torque applied to those splines.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

electro wrks said:


> One way to compensate for the shrinkage might be to dip and dry the male spline plaster core piece in watered down plaster (or a more heat resistant material), to slightly build up the size of the core.


That was my idea. If I'm only off by 0.003", (and if what you say is correct, I'll be off by ~0.004-0.005" for zinc), then I only have to add that much by dipping.

However, anyone who's ever drawn ever-increasing sized bubbles around the path of a letter would know that eventually your shape averages out to a circle. Yes the outer circumference would expand, but the inner creveces would also fill in until the splines didn't exist at all. That would be wonderful for clearance, but not so much for grip. It's a double-edge sword.

I've made one too tight, perhaps next time I'll risk making one too loose.



> the molten metal should be degassed in a vacuum or chemically


I dumped borox in there, stirred, then swept the dross, which I think is for degassing?



> and the mold filled from the bottom up. This reduces the porosity and.voids


Ahh, yes that makes sense, the moisture boiling off would boil off into the air above it, rather than into the metal around it.

I have enough aluminum to do that, but I don't think I have enough zinc to create a pouring cup, downsprue, or riser. I'm right on the edge of having enough even after thinning the walls out.



OR-Carl said:


> This whole project does sort of seem like an elaborate justification to just play around in the shop;


How dare you.

It is neither elaborate nor a justification. It is me playing around in the shop. 



> I am very curious how long a motor adapter made of melted-down brik-a-brak could hope to last. Pot-metal is not a material famed for its strength, and there is going to be a lot of torque applied to those splines.


The original splined shaft is about 1" diameter.
The input shaft of the transmission on my large ~300hp 4x4 SUV's transfer case is I think 1.3".
This motor 's shaft is 1 5/8". Which is more than 2x the cross sectional area of the original.
The wall of the coupler is 3/8" thick. It's thicker than the business end of a baseball bat.

Heavy duty enough to be a cannon. I am far more worried about alignment than I am strength.

Also, it's not pot-metal. Pot-metal, or "white metal" is usually tin (and whatever else gets melted down into the pool). Tin is crappy, crumbly and weak. I'm using casting alloys of aluminum and casting alloys of zinc. Zinc is as strong as cast iron.

If it breaks, oh well. I'll curse and swear and weld the two shafts together forever.


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

I may be way off base, and I confess my only knowledge on the subject comes from what I read on wikipedia. 

Pot metal - Wikipedia 
"There is no metallurgical standard for pot metal. Common metals in pot metal include zinc, lead, copper, tin, magnesium, aluminium, iron, and cadmium. "
"The primary component of pot metal is zinc, "
"Pot metal is generally used for parts that are not subject to high stresses or torque. 

Part of me really wants the idea of home-cast adapter to be a viable solution, and since it does seem like you are having fun, by all means, carry on! If it works, I will be impressed. Is the idea to machine down an end of your casting to mount the flywheel?


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## tylerwatts (Feb 9, 2012)

Matt I think you are doing great things, and yes as much having fun and learning and doing it your way. Take others' comments with a pinch of salt. If they can't be supportive or at least courteous they should mind their own business.

I'm impressed with your approach and pragmatism to your build and hope you make it to the finish line. I'm sure you will and it'll be a better build for it too!

PS the casting is looking promising. Better too much material and you can dress it back than not enough. I'd be tempted to use a blueing technique using permanent marker against the motor spline to get the fit just right, once you have successfully poured your coupler.

Cheers
Tyler


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

OR-Carl said:


> I may be way off base, and I confess my only knowledge on the subject comes from what I read on wikipedia.


Hmm. "Pot metal" is just a derogatory term for "throw in anything that's left over and melt it". So it varies.









Zamak - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org





Zamak on the other hand is a controlled mixture, is nearly as strong as cast iron and is self-lubricating.






Zinc Alloy Die Casting Comparison: Why Zinc Reigns Supreme


To find out more about how zinc die casting can help your business get the components it needs, contact us today.



www.lakeshorediecast.com





If I add a little bit of copper (1%) and a little more aluminum (a couple %) it's becomes even stronger and harder.



> Is the idea to machine down an end of your casting to mount the flywheel?


Nope. Join motor shaft to transmission output shaft.










That's just the little tail housing on the transmission, it's about the size of Coke bottle.



tylerwatts said:


> I'd be tempted to use a blueing technique using permanent marker against the motor spline to get the fit just right, once you have successfully poured your coupler.


I might do that if I have to machine it manually. Not worth a lot of extra effort in the mold making stage to get it perfect.

It's not that much effort to just adjust the shape afterwards. There are 25 splines, there are 4 faces on each spline (peak, valley, left and right sides), I might have to remove 0.003" from each face. A little bit of filing with a key file or a piece of sandpaper wrapped around a hacksaw blade. Just go around in a circle until it's done. Same thing they do with dentistry.

Considering the motor shaft is hardened steel and the coupler might be aluminum or zinc... if I could support the ass end of it and not be hammering on bearings, I'd just squirt some cutting fluid on it, use the shaft itself as a perfect broach and hammer the coupler on and off until it was clear. We're talking chips thinner than a sheet of aluminum foil.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

No news like bad news...

Took a close look and noticed some funny coloring on the driver's side.






Trouble is... in the area I _know_ to be bad, I can't visually identify it with the scope. So for all I know, most of it is that bad.

I only lightly chain-whipped the outer rocker, pretty hard to get any kind of movement with a narrow triangular cross section, but, maybe better than nothing. Looks like lots of debris knocked loose, but, I didn't chain-whip the inner and it looks exactly the same so maybe not.

Looks like I'll need to patch significant portions of both wheel panels on both sides in the rear, and probably the rearward portion of the front wheelwells too. I expected a couple small patches, looks like I'm in for 6 medium sized patches, and I get to discover how applicable my trigger time welding up the interior is going to be on the exterior where it'll be visible. I predict.... not well. Have a feeling I'm coming on a turning point of a project I can finish, to one I never will.

Rockers on the passenger side don't look as suspicious as the driver's, but, I'll give them the probing too. Not sure what to do about those. Maybe plug the ports with hot glue and fill them with another gallon of evaporust. I suspect the paint is structural in many places, I'll leave a plastic sheet underneath so I don't waste all my evaporust when it escapes. And then, who knows what's left in there.

Rather demoralizing, especially for my first day back working on it after several months, and having wasted all the daylight hours of the summer on other people's vehicles. Back to working under bulb light. Probably has to be fixed to pass out-of-province safety too.


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## Duncan (Dec 8, 2008)

Matt - there comes a time in every project

I think you need to either get the whole shell blasted and start again

Or simply start again

Have you looked at the "Locost" ?
It would probably be quicker and easier to make a Locost chassis to take the Opel running gear


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## brian_ (Feb 7, 2017)

Duncan said:


> Have you looked at the "Locost" ?
> It would probably be quicker and easier to make a Locost chassis to take the Opel running gear


Perhaps, but it would make little sense to use the Opel running gear without the Opel GT body - the body is the point of this vehicle selection. If building a tube frame special, there are many more suitable donors of suspension parts.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

brian_ said:


> the body is the point of this vehicle selection.


Indeed.

Back to square 1 if it doesn't look like a GT. Heck the suspensions are on my list of things to eventually replace. My car selection process was pretty much "Is it small and light? Does it look cool and would I want to drive it?"

The rust isn't murderously bad, and I knew I'd be doing work ahead and behind the wheelwells, just not this much work. It probably changes nothing except how much more work I have to do, which hurts my odds of ever getting it done, especially if it's a "must be fixed to pass roadworthy inspection" kind of thing.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

Well, did some more digging into the rust. Two weeks ago. Trying to stay motivated.

For those that enjoy sped-up rust pokin' 'n proddin':















Few notes:

- Driver's Rocker isn't in great shape, but appears to be worst just in a diagonal line. My guess is that it was parked outside, with the tail lights removed, on a driveway or hill, until dust settled. Annual Arizona rain rusted a single line through the metal there. The interior rocker has holes at the back but otherwise isn't too bad. I see a line of paint bubbles that seemed solid when I poked them but I'm thinking have to be where the rust bled through to a pinprick. Maybe best to just replace an extra 6" down that line.

- I don't know what those white goopy knobs are inside the driver's side rearmost fender, but, I'd suspected this car was rear ended at some point, lightly. Looks like those might be the scabs from dent pulling? Isn't obvious to me from the outside.

- Passenger side isn't nearly as bad, half the damage. Doesn't really matter, a slightly smaller or larger circumference doesn't add too much time, and the damage is mostly in a single plane so no complex curves, low enough that the wheel flares haven't sprouted form the side yet.

- Passenger rocker has no holes at all that I found. Rust spot is from the outside where paint wore off. Camera scope picks up a couple rusty patches inside, but otherwise looks great.

- Front wheelwells and fenders seem intact, couldn't poke a hole anywhere. So damage is confined to the ass end and the driver's rocker.

I'm not even sure where to buy sheet metal from affordably. Had an idea to just take a sawzall to the junkyard and cut the roof off a minivan or something equally sheet-esque. Then I wondered if the metal on a new car is more likely to be paper thin compared the GT. Maybe should try the side of a truck box instead. Maybe older is better? Will have to do that soon, summer is over, fall is here, snow arrives soon.


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## Duncan (Dec 8, 2008)

Matt
I have been there - you need to handle rust as a zero or 100% - you are going to do a ton of work - and then nothing

Rust is horrible

Either blast it down to bare metal and paint it immediately - as in within the hour - or it will do a zombie and come back at you 

I have a horrible prediction that you will make a half decent car and it will then fall apart in front of you


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

I live in a bone dry area so, painting immediately isn't an issue, but yeah, I'll probably hose the inside with rust converter.

I'm not concerned about it continuing to rust. It's just more work than I planned on doing.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

Finally made a go at casting with Zamak, after my first attempt struggled to maintain high enough temperature with aluminum.






Stunning partial success:

- This is a great way of turning $300 of conduit couplers into $3 of zinc.

- Best cheap source of Zamak I found was in old 2-hole punches. Just had to rip them apart and remove the steel punches and springs. They were a pound and a half each. Towel racks, cheap chromed drawer knobs, banister supports, and a CVT pulley from an old treadmill were all also Zamak.

- Zamak weighs 2.5 x as much as Aluminum. My previous attempt that got the giant airpocket frozen into it was 404g. If that was filled solid it would probably be 40% heavier. All told, I'd need at least 2500g (actually, bad math I notice now, I calculated as if missing 60%, not 40%, oh well). Turns out I had around 4kg of the stuff, so, should have been plenty even after the excessive dross of melting it in a frying pan.

- A heavy duty stainless steel frying pan is not strong enough to lift 10 lbs of zinc. Had to use pliers on the far side to help

- Missed the sprue, sloshed over into the main pour.

- Zamak is 2.5x the weight of aluminum. Buoyancy on that plaster form is now 2.5x as strong. Up it pops like a cork. Nothing to do but finish the pour and spend 2 hours melting it down again. In retrospect, this is like filling a bathtub and expecting the tennis ball to stay at the bottom.

- Form seemed relatively undamaged by the pour, so for shits and giggles, I stuffed it back in the topside, just guessing at where the center was and the correct angle.

- I hit pretty close to center. I hit pretty close to square to the surface of the pour too... except that the mold wasn't square.

- I probably destroyed the motor bearings, but I lightly hammered the coupler onto the motor, and then pried it back off a half-dozen times. The hardened motor shaft is taking just the slightest shavings off of the surface on a half-dozen splines. It's already 2/3 of the way on, I won't press it further until I have a slide hammer or some way of getting it off, it's too deep into the recess to pry it out if I go deeper.

- Surface of the splines seems as good as they ever were in plaster. Zamak is famed for being a zero-machining process, you can capture the surface of a coin accurately if you want, so all imperfections were silicone/plaster based. It's good enough.

- All the excess chunks I cut off showed solid metal all the way through, no porosity.

- The coupler being off-kilter isn't a big deal. It doesn't have to be a 1/2" thick, and certainly won't be at the transmission end.

Overall, Zamak was beautiful to cast with. Stayed glassy smooth for several minutes (off camera) after the pour. I'll have to keep an eye out at the junkyards for old bathroom fixtures and such.

Plan now is to get the motor spinning, and use it with a grinder as a lathe to make the coupler centered on the motor shaft. Then drill it out for the transmission shaft (a drillbit on a rotating workpiece is self-centering... supposedly).

Also, there's an air cavity at the bottom of the splined area, probably from gas escaping from the plaster. It's not critical, and once I have the hole drilled for the transmission tail shaft, I can gouge the sides and repour some zamak just to give it a helping hand and fill the gap, even if it doesn't add much for strength.

.


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## brian_ (Feb 7, 2017)

MattsAwesomeStuff said:


> "Pot metal" is just a derogatory term for "throw in anything that's left over and melt it". So it varies.
> 
> 
> 
> ...





MattsAwesomeStuff said:


> Finally made a go at casting with Zamak, after my first attempt struggled to maintain high enough temperature with aluminum.
> 
> ...
> - Best cheap source of Zamak I found was in old 2-hole punches. Just had to rip them apart and remove the steel punches and springs. They were a pound and a half each. Towel racks, cheap chromed drawer knobs, banister supports, and a CVT pulley from an old treadmill were all also Zamak.


How do you know that any of these salvage pieces are Zamak, rather than another random pot metal alloy of similar density? How do you know which Zamak alloy they are, or that they're the same as each other?


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

brian_ said:


> How do you know that any of these salvage pieces are Zamak,


In short, other than reasonable guesses, I don't.



> Rather than another random pot metal alloy of similar density?


Similar density and melting point? Zamak is heavy and melts on a stove. Not much else will do that.

I took samples of each and put them on a burner first to make sure they melt in isolation, not dissolve into the alloy (which can happen at a much lower temperature).

I was using mostly mass-produced cast items, not oddball junk, which gives me higher hope.
- Conduit fittings are pretty reliably Zamak. Fire hazard and industrial corrosion, I can't see them just being pot metal. They all came out of commercial facilities.
- The 2-hole punches are old, Canadian-made, and heavy duty
- The CVT pulley was US made.

Those were 98% of the mass of the melt, I'm reasonably confident they were proper Zamak die cast. More importantly, because they're all old already, I'm reasonably sure they don't have lead-inclusion leading eventually to "zinc pest" where the lead crumbles the zinc away because there no signs of that, and even then, that takes decades after a new melt. I might be dead before that happens.

The towel holders and knobs I'm less confident of other than their melting points. Probably should have excluded them since I was clearly over the minimum I needed and they might have had lead or cadmium or who knows what dissolved in them. Almost certainly chinese made, and cheap/thin. They went in last and because of the chrome plating, ended up being mostly dross that was removed anyway.

Also, economics. There's shortcuts to take in terms of not properly sorting scrap metal, but anything else thrown in deliberately is going to be more expensive than zinc.

Tin and Zinc weigh almost exactly the same, but tin is 8x the price so there's not point in using it. Lead is about 2x the price.

Nothing else would melt at that low of a temperature. Aluminum and copper would dissolve into the alloy I suppose, but again, each are more valuable on their own.



> How do you know which Zamak alloy they are, or that they're the same as each other?


I don't, but it doesn't matter, they're all in the same ballpark and the alloy differences aren't magic. The more X you put in, the more you start to see properties associated with that alloy. If they're many different alloys, I'll have an averaged out performance of whatever was in the pot. I probably should have sprinkled in some more copper, tends to make it stronger, but, then I'm having to stir it to make sure it dissolves equally and then I have more dross and air dissolved so, meh.

For example, wiki says: "Zamak 5 has the same composition as zamak 3 with the addition of 1% copper in order to increase strength (by approximately 10%[17]), hardness and corrosive resistance, but reduces ductility.[31] It also has less dimensional accuracy".

So, if I mix 50% Z5 with 50% Z3, I'm at worst losing out on 10% strength gain, but most likely just gain 5% strength and hardness instead of 10%. If I accidentally add 3% copper, I've made Z2 which has 20% more strength increase, but becomes brittle over time. Z4 has less copper than normal, and it's to prevent the melt from sticking to the dies. Z7 has more magnesium so that it's thinner and fills small voids easier.

... none of this matters. If I mix a bit of each, I'm getting partial changes in the properties. And I'm casting a giant slug of it, not picking up delicate surface features.

It's almost certainly all Z3 anyway. Basic boring industrial stuff.

Perhaps most importantly... DIY EVers have typically made couplers out of aluminum, which is weak and brittle compared to zinc. I'm building a zinc coupler of comparable size, so, minute differences just won't matter.

Or... I'm wrong, and it falls apart after use. I guess we'll see.


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## rishimaze (May 23, 2021)

This car is a LOT of work!
Its been a while since there was an update. How is it going?


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

rishimaze said:


> This car is a LOT of work!


I was going to have my first conversion be something simple and lame, like a '94 civic or something. Dead simple, easy to swap, be done with it. Then do a car I was more interested in driving.

But then I discovered what car I really wanted to convert, and one came up for purchase, cheap, almost immediately, so, I got thrown into the deep end a bit on car restoration. Without even having a shop to work on it.



> Its been a while since there was an update. How is it going?


I haven't worked on it in 8 months. I was procrastinating on some other big things I needed to take care of, so I figured, I'll put the car on pause and stop avoiding one type of work by doing another type.

Fast forward 8 months, I haven't worked on my car, but I also haven't done any work on the other things that need doing.

Also, Covid put a bit of a wrench in the works, I needed a transmission from the local owners club, but, didn't want to take risks with any of them hauling it out of the parts barn, which was also snowed in.

So, only update is that last week I got a transmission and bell housing, and have to make some choices about just how much of it I want to keep.

Also, my tools got stole a month ago, along with my commuter vehicle, so, that didn't help. Still trying to find out what I'm missing.


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## brian_ (Feb 7, 2017)

MattsAwesomeStuff said:


> I was going to have my first conversion be something simple and lame, like a '94 civic or something. Dead simple, easy to swap, be done with it. Then do a car I was more interested in driving.
> 
> But then I discovered what car I really wanted to convert, and one came up for purchase, cheap, almost immediately, so, I got thrown into the deep end a bit on car restoration. Without even having a shop to work on it.


There's nothing especially complex about converting an Opel GT (compared to other models of cars, such as a Civic)... but starting from body which needs a massive amount of work just to be structurally sound makes any conversion difficult.



MattsAwesomeStuff said:


> Also, my tools got stole a month ago, along with my commuter vehicle, so, that didn't help. Still trying to find out what I'm missing.


Sorry to hear about that.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

brian_ said:


> There's nothing especially complex about converting an Opel GT (compared to other models of cars, such as a Civic)... but starting from body which needs a massive amount of work just to be structurally sound makes any conversion difficult.


Yes, the constraint was budget- and effort-wise. I wanted something I didn't care much about for one car and then something I did for the other. On the GT I was pretty sure I was going to have to do a tradeoff of time:money to get something nicer. And, that it would be older and probably require more attention in general.

A nicer, needs-nothing GT with no bodywork required is $5,000-$10,000. Too much of a luxury for me to spend on for a hobby.
A nicer '94 Civic hatchback is $800.
Instead I bought a pair of $200 GTs. With less rust to repair than a $3500 GT, but more internal bodywork needed.

No regrets but got in a little over my head. Hardly any of my challenge has been "convert an EV cheap", almost all of it has been "restore classic car cheap". Only regret I suppose is that I was actually looking forward to taking the engine and such out, and mine came with it already pre-stripped.

Biggest surprise so far has been that there was nothing convenient to fit the forklift motor spines.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

First update in a while, before I catch up, a question:

I want to use an iBooster (electric brake booster). I found some Gen1s for sale.









( Full unit )









( Just the booster, no MC/reservoir. )

Lots of these are sold without the master cylinder. That's okay, I have a master cylinder for the GT, already rebuilt/refurbished.










What do I want?

Do I want to save myself an extra $100 by not using the Bosch iBooster's master cylinder, and somehow plumb my proper GT master cylinder to the electric brake booster? Since the MC is designed for the brake system on the GT (is it?)? Or, do I want to spend that extra $100 and get the MC that belongs to the iBooster, but does not belong to the GT?

I'm redoing the lines anyways, so that's not an issue.

I presume the connection to the MC can just be any hydraulic fitting? And maybe slap a bracket there so that it stays put? I don't have much knowledge about brake systems.


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## brian_ (Feb 7, 2017)

MattsAwesomeStuff said:


> Do I want to save myself an extra $100 by not using the Bosch iBooster's master cylinder, and somehow plumb my proper GT master cylinder to the electric brake booster?


The iBooster boost unit isn't "plumbed" to the master cylinder, because the booster is completely electromechanical, with no hydraulic component. As far as the plumbing is concerned, there would just be the stock master cylinder (maybe positioned differently). What the booster does (like a vacuum booster) is add push to the rod from the pedal.



MattsAwesomeStuff said:


> ... Since the MC is designed for the brake system on the GT (is it?)? Or, do I want to spend that extra $100 and get the MC that belongs to the iBooster, but does not belong to the GT?


It probably depends on how readily the GT's master cylinder will work with (mount on and connect mechanically to) the iBooster. The GT's master cylinder will have the right size of bore (at least for the stock car) and ports that work with fittings matching the size of brakes lines in the car.



MattsAwesomeStuff said:


> I presume the connection to the MC can just be any hydraulic fitting?


No. There are many styles of hydraulic fittings, and you need to match the master cylinder ports. They are normally flare connections (line is flared and nut around line clamps flared end into port), but there are various sizes and styles of flares. With any luck the GT has common double flares, but it's likely a metric line size.


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## remy_martian (Feb 4, 2019)

Look at what brakeline fittings you need, in detail which includes ordering & testing them, before you decide anything.

Using the iBooster master may involve unobtainium brakeline adapters you'll need to custom make.

Using the Opel master also means custom design & machining of the mount and pushrod if you use the electric booster.

For my C5....vacuum pump. Good enough for production Caddy & Malibu, good enough for me. Got bigger fish to fry.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

brian_ said:


> What the booster does (like a vacuum booster) is add push to the rod from the pedal.


Ahh, I figured at some point there would be fluid pushing at the entrance to the MC. So that's just a rod you push on? Hmm. Well that doesn't sound overly challenging.



> It probably depends on how readily the GT's master cylinder will work with (mount on and connect mechanically to) the iBooster. [...] With any luck the GT has common double flares, but it's likely a metric line size.


Ahh, yes. The Opel GT community pointed me in the right direction of the proper fittings and such, I ordered those 2 years ago.



remy_martian said:


> Look at what brakeline fittings you need, in detail which includes ordering & testing them, before you decide anything. Using the iBooster master may involve unobtainium brakeline adapters you'll need to custom make.


Ahh, good to know.



> Using the Opel master also means custom design & machining of the mount and pushrod if you use the electric booster.


I think that intimidates me less than:

A - Spending at least an extra $100 for the iBooster MC, and,
B - Changing the fittings over.



> For my C5....vacuum pump. Good enough for production Caddy & Malibu, good enough for me. Got bigger fish to fry.


I do already have a beefy 12v vacuum pump.

But, either solution is going to require a fair amount of custom work. To archive this here instead of just my Salvage Thread...

The Opel GT brake booster sits on a weird 2 foot long extension at the front of the hood, to get it all the way past the entire engine, for space constraint reasons:




















And my brake booster is in questionable state of functioning (it holds pressure, but I'm skeptical, as I mistook a large hexagonal seal for a plastic bolt and spun it way too many times). And, my replacement brake booster isn't from a GT, it's from a Manta, which has a different pushrod:










I think I've mostly decided not to keep the booster in its original janky location.

So that means I'm likely to choose between relocating the brake booster, and switching over to the Manta one (with a vacuum pump), or, using the iBooster (with a fabricated master cylinder).

Relocated Manta:

1 - Make a bracket for Manta booster near the firewall.
2 - Make a bracket for 12v vac pump
3 - Wire it up.
4 - Build/buy a vac reservoir.
5 - Make a mount for the vac reservoir.
6 - Make vacuum fittings to the reservoir.
7 - But and mount a pressure switch so it knows when to turn off, and wire that up to.
8 - Fabricate a booster pushrod adapter (doesn't match the GT's original)
9 - Still deal with the noise.

// OR //

Using the iBooster and the GT Master cylinder:

1 - Make a bracket for the iBooster.
2 - Wire it up
3 - Make and mount a plate to hold the MC to the iBooster

...

Both solutions will need new lines anyways (lines were cut for previous owner's V8 attempt). So there's no savings there.

So, if I'm doing the lazy "just get it done" thing... which is actually the laziest? The 12v vac pump solution has very little problem solving (which is the real time sink), and probably no hard obstacles. The iBooster solution is definitely easier, unless I struggle mating the GT's MC to the iBooster, and then I'll probably regret it.

And, I'm cheap, and this is supposed to be a fairly extreme budget build from garbage and unwanted items, but I bet every time I hear that vacuum pump turn on I'm going to wish I could pay $1 to not listen to it, and that pays for the iBooster in a couple months.

I guess then, not having really seen what's involved, how stupid is it for someone with an angle grinder, drill, and tap & die set to attempt to mate those two components together? Like, "take your time and you should be okay"? Or, "Even being your most careful you're not going to pull that off"?


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## Duncan (Dec 8, 2008)

MattsAwesomeStuff said:


> Ahh, I figured at some point there would be fluid pushing at the entrance to the MC. So that's just a rod you push on? Hmm. Well that doesn't sound overly challenging.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Or you could use the simple solution - push harder!

A small light car like the GT does NOT need a brake booster - the first time you drive it the brakes will feel heavy - after 5 minutes they will feel "normal"


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

Duncan said:


> A small light car like the GT does NOT need a brake booster


We've been through this not once, not twice, not even three times, but this now is the fourth 😁. At least, maybe I'm missing some.

Yes, you do need a brake booster 

I've skimped on a lot of sketchy shit, but I'm not removing powered brakes. Even on an EV that will hardly ever use them.

You're nothing if not consistent. But, your solution doesn't apply to everyone else's. My car is light, but it's sitll twice the weight of yours, and changing the braking parameters, cylinder bore, or leverage is no less fabrication than doing breaks properly-ish. And, I don't have to be (as) scared if someone else were to ever drive my car.

You might be right, but, there's no simple way to test it for me to discover whether your approach is convincing enough. If I'm putting the work into modifying it, I'd rather not do it twice.


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## remy_martian (Feb 4, 2019)

Not "lazy"...."efficient" 😂


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## remy_martian (Feb 4, 2019)

Duncan said:


> Or you could use the simple solution - push harder!
> 
> A small light car like the GT does NOT need a brake booster


That depends on the type of brake and its sizing and leverage.

That OEM booster relocation setup is merely Germans efficiently euthanizing drivers that survive being impaled on the steering shaft. Agree it should get disappeared if possible.


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## Duncan (Dec 8, 2008)

MattsAwesomeStuff said:


> We've been through this not once, not twice, not even three times, but this now is the fourth 😁. At least, maybe I'm missing some.
> 
> Yes, you do need a brake booster
> 
> ...


Opal GT - the early one


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opel_GT


Weight 845 kg to 940 kg - 

my device is 805 kg - so not really half the weight!

Your legs need to hold you up when you walk - and accelerate you when you run or jump so they are strong enough to easily push 100 kg for a small guy

Power brakes on a 2000 kg monstrosity are a good idea - 

But on a light weight car like the GT 

I have other people driving my car - I just say - "manual brakes they will feel heavy" and nobody has had any problems

Still its your car - go to it! 
Don't let anything get in the way of getting it on the road


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## remy_martian (Feb 4, 2019)

Don't let anything get in the way after getting it on the road 😂


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

MattsAwesomeStuff said:


> I bet every time I hear that vacuum pump turn on I'm going to wish I could pay $1 to not listen to it


The vacuum pump in my truck is the loudest thing on it, but to me the sound is reassuring. When I hear it running, I know at least I still have brakes. With manual steering, a clutch, and a charged brake booster I can feel pretty confident that I will at least maintain control over my car no matter what decides to fail. I bet you could mitigate the sound quite a bit with some sort of sound-dampening material?


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

remy_martian said:


> Not "lazy"...."efficient" 😂


Same same.



remy_martian said:


> That OEM booster relocation setup is merely Germans efficiently euthanizing drivers that survive being impaled on the steering shaft.


There's still another 2 feet of car past the end of the hood. I dunno that I'm overly concerned with safety during the crash as I am prior to the crash, but considering the lack of airbags all I've got for safety is distance between me and the very-much-cosmetic-only bumper.. I'll take any bonus safeness.



Duncan said:


> my device is 805 kg - so not really half the weight!


Hmm, I thought you were a lot lighter than that. You're right, that's pretty close.



> Your legs need to hold you up when you walk - and accelerate you when you run or jump so they are strong enough to easily push 100 kg for a small guy


I biked everywhere before I learned to drive not that long ago. When skinny jeans were in style, I couldn't even get my calves past the thighs. 

Another issue is insurance. To say I removed powered brakes might not be appreciated if it ever comes up.



OR-Carl said:


> the sound is reassuring


I'll still have an e-brake. EVs are annoying enough with weird noises. The motor and inverter are the ones that scare me but I'd rather the vac pump not be on the list.

...

Back to topic, fabbing my own mount for the master cylinder to an iBooster? Simple, or foolish to try?


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## remy_martian (Feb 4, 2019)

"I guess then, not having really seen what's involved, how stupid is it for someone with an angle grinder, drill, and tap & die set to attempt to mate those two components together?"

Machine shop, yes.

What you described for tools being applied to the problem sounds foolish to me without at least a lathe and mill in the picture. But, that's me. I see what @gregski did on his booster and I shudder at the thought of it being on the road, but members of this community thought it was ok.

Not

My

Project

So 🤷‍♂️

I suppose it depends on your own standards...the beauty of poor subject matter depth is you don't know how foolish you're being or where to draw the line and it's you that ultimately has to assess what's appropriate and good enough since it's your project. Unless something happens, then it's "their" assessment.

You're free to try anything.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

remy_martian said:


> What you described for tools being applied to the problem sounds foolish to me without at least a lathe and mill in the picture.


I mean, I can use a Tomach and big Challenger lathe or an Acra mill, and a whole host of other $200,000 worth of tools whenever I want, but, I'm somewhat determined to at least try to make a go of things using tools anyone could have access to.



> But, that's me. I see what @gregski did on his booster and I shudder at the thought of it being on the road, but members of this community thought it was ok.


Lol, my first reaction was "Wait, @gregski 's done this already? Great, let me go copy what he did..."

Indeed: 1971 GMCe Lexus GS450H BMW 530e Tesla Model S powered...

And, damn, I hadn't been keeping up on his thread. He also did the Prius steering column a week before I went out and had to discover how to do mine. I'm practically plagiarizing his effort.

I wouldn't do my booster exactly that way, but, considering the tinfoil it's currently bolted to, even it would certainly be a step up.

And hmm, I see your point. As usual, you've probably got your engineer's hat on a bit too tight. For a commercial product, you're right, it's not even approaching acceptable. For a homebuilt one-off? I can't see the way he's added the booster there to change much or any under emergency pressure. We're perhaps talking risk/paranoia categories down to "Should we be wearing walking helmets?" types of accurate, but dismissable considerations.



> I suppose it depends on your own standards...the beauty of poor subject matter depth is you don't know how foolish you're being or where to draw the line


Indeed, had I known how much I _didn't_ know about classic car restoration, even minimal standards for such, I might never have started.


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## piotrsko (Dec 9, 2007)

Geezer here. Back in the day, only large expensive vehicles like Cadillac which were driven by fragile old ladies had power brakes. Your typical chevy, buick, ford, dodge, pontiac, GMC.. some up to 3 tons unladen, had long throw manual master cylinders and drum brakes. Sometimes they didn't stop well like todays stuff, but you didn't tailgate on the freeway either. Everything else tended to have air brakes, but I have driven non boosted juice brake box trucks that stopped just fine.

Now get off my lawn, dagnabbit


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## piotrsko (Dec 9, 2007)

While I'm thinking about it.... ever notice the brake pedal has a 1/4"by 1" thick chunk of steel holding it to the pivot? Why would the engineers make such a heavy piece? Hint: brake pedal force can get really high.


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## remy_martian (Feb 4, 2019)

^ tight hats 😂

Some 16 year old kid was driving his parents' 1970 Chevelle at 90mph and got boxed in with a semi in front - drum brakes faded to nothing. Since that day he's worn especially tight hats on brakes.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

Well..

That only took 3 years.



http://imgur.com/mPdlpqk


...

Not sure what I did to change it, or, if it would've worked the other day and maybe my wires were just too thin.

Things I did differently than 6 months ago:

1 - Grounded the case to the system ground.

2 - Cranked the boost up to 30,000 instead of default at 1700.

3 - Replaced the car battery and gator leads with an old car battery charger.

In any case, she's finally spinning the (100lb) test motor!

Next up I guess clean up my storage unit, move the inverter down there and see if the big (260lb) forklift motor I picked up 4 years ago actually works.

And, I guess it's time to figure out the circuit for the voltage shifting on the current sensors and order some parts.

Then I'm going to use the big motor and an angle grinder as a lathe to machine the coupler I cast out of zinc two years ago.


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