'84 Ford Laser EV Conversion Project

[ApproachCautiously]

@kalebludlow

Unfortunately the rear plastic window Venetian fell off mid transit, and we also smashed a rear light while pushing it into its current resting place. I never half ass anything

Noo! the back end of the body is the ugliest and best part

I really wish we had more Aussie import cars over here in the US because you guys got so many ugly cars that we never got to see over here. Ugly as in it is so ridiculous looking and I want one to be clear. Not ugly-ugly like some of the cars over here. _{I first learned what we were missing out on via the Garbage Time youtube channel} it is a good thing that I can’t safely drive cars anyway or else I’d probably be paying too much to import a piece of junk car and too much to fix it up

[kalebludlow]

I really wish the rest of the world got the AU Falcon

[exx]

Dear god.
Hey at least we’ve had the Fiat Multipla.
All the others look the same these days.

[ApproachCautiously]

I dunno about the specs/ power but I’d say it barely counts as ugly but in a good way. Mostly because the entire back and middle of the body looks like some of the generic “old people cars” you see over here in the US.

The front alone qualifies as a good ugly though

[kalebludlow]

The BA Falcon was the followup to the AU, revamped front end, brand new Barra DOHC engine (basically best 6cyl you can get that no one outside Australia knows about). Imagine getting close to 500kw while spending only hundreds on supporting mods

[kalebludlow]

Soooo uhhh this was not the last time it got moved before moving under its own power. Small update to come in a few days, have made ACTUAL progress in the last few days. Still yet to roll

[itsrow]

LETS GOOOO, I hoped this project was still ongoing!

[kalebludlow]

So here is the current state of affairs with the P112 transaxle, and Yaris/Auris Gen3 inverter. It is essentially mechanically mounted, and the car, and my amounts, are able to carry the weight of the trans successfully for the first time. In some of the images you can see some wiring hanging around, one of my next tasks is to decipher the original wiring diagram and determine what I need to reuse and discard in the way of wiring. At this point, the main hurdle from getting the wheels spinning is buying the add-in board for the inverter to get things spinning. Hoping to make some progress on that front in the new year, as I continue to tidy the whole setup. Coming together really nicely

The top and bottom mounts are the main load bearing mounts, the bottom one being a stock factory mount, and the right one being a welded up one, that uses existing bolt holes to hold it in place, so that it can abide by Aussie standards

Here’s a better view of the new mount, with a screwdriver to hold it in place instead of a bolt so I can easily unmount. Previous mounts in this location only relied on the horizontal mounting pressure, whereas I have new moved some of the load over to share it vertically with the frame rails

This shows the bottom mount towards the rear of the trans, towards the vehicle body. This mount will hold a bit of weight, but is mostly there to stop rotational movement

This is the space below the inverter, which is where batteries will eventually go. The mount you can see on the right is the only one that still needs to be ‘re-engineered’, its just there to stop any slop

Here is the front on view of the engine bay, the lift is currently holding the weight of the trans, but as is, the mounts are 100% capable of handling the trans’ weight

This is the clearance underneath the trans, probably a good few inches to work with under there. Considering the rubbers on the mounts are all original from 1984, they hold up really well

Last two are just using a fist for scale, I have small hands tho

[kalebludlow]

Not sure who to tag, but can anyone from the current esk8 brains trust advise me on a cheapish ESC that I could use to power this transaxle, before I buy the full fledged board? I no longer own any esk8 stuff, and have been out of the scene for a few years now, but a cheap flipsky or something would be great to allow me to continue working on the vehicle and getting things rolling

Edit: should note that I would want something that can go higher than 12S if possible, continuous current of say 50A would be best. Just something that can work with a resolver encoder and a simple 2 wire throttle. I was looking at the Flipsky FT85BS for the price but not sure if it’s actually any decent