More Refurbishment & Electrics

 

She's starting to come together nicely!

 

While waiting for the motor mounting brackets and timing belt pulleys to arrive I tackled the bonnet. Having all those electric bits I needed to make the bonnet more waterproof, including sealing over the fuel, water, exhaust and air-cleaner holes, and making a solid front grill (with mock mesh). And, of course, including new LED headlights 😃.

 

And, new decals and "EV" stickers.

As shown above, I repurposed the old tractor dashboard (which needed a sturdy mount, as it holds up the rear of the bonnet too) and installed the gauges (Cycle Analyst CA3 ones), switches and other controls I needed  - one set each for the separate motors and controllers.

Yay! The motor mounting brackets have arrived, so now some real progress...

Motors mounted (still awaiting pulleys)

If anyone's interested, here's the CAD drawing for the mounting brackets:

After completing all the wiring and hooking up the batteries I gave the controllers and motors a test run. After trouble-shooting a few minor issues and getting a Hall Effect throttle for the transmission controller (couldn't get the Far Driver ND72850 to work very well with a potentiometer throttle) everything is working as expected.

Wiring is still a bit messy. I'll loom it all better once we've had some decent test runs and are happy that no changes are required.

Here's a video of the me starting up and running the motors:

 

 Next blog post we'll have the pulleys installed and be doing some test runs - can't wait! Watch out for the next installment...