Chapter 9 - How Hard Is It to Bolt On a Motor? I Mean Really? (part one)
While crawling around under the car, I find 4 threaded holes in the left side of the steel frame, and a matching 4 holes on the right. We need to bolt the electric motor solidly to the frame and this looks like a good spot. Brad cuts the heads off 8 bolts and screws the bolts into the frame. Next, we press a wide wooden board onto the bolts. This leaves the board with a favorable impression of the bolt hole pattern. Brad drills out the wood pattern. We now get a steel beam, 5" wide, and shaped like the letter C to make it really rigid. With the wood pattern clamped to the beam, we have a workable template for drilling the 8 holes in exactly the right spots.
We bolt the steel beam to the bottom of the frame. We slide the heavy motor on to the beam, and bolt the motor to the beam. We look things over and pat ourselves on the back. One of the most difficult parts of the project is done, neat and sweet!
Oct. 25, 2007
The Minnesota chapter of the EAA is at my house for their October
meeting. Over 20 people show up. Everybody checks out the Volt Vette.
None have any thing bad to say about the project.
The next work day comes. Doubts and second thoughts pop up like weeds. With the 5 inch wide beam we can bolt the 11 inch motor down with 6 bolts. If we throw away the 5" beam and replace it a 6 inch wide beam, we could lock down the motor with 9 bolts instead of "just" 6. I think what we have is good enough. But, the rest of the group fears that the TransWarP 11 will prove to be much more powerful than any motor the group has seen before. If the motor was to tear itself loose at 60 miles per hour, the result would not be pretty! Out voted, I go to the steelyard and buy a 6" beam.
Next chapter.
"I was born in a log cabin I built myself!"