V2Rocket

I would ditch the torque tube and mount the motor directly to the transmission in the back, might have to "massage" the rear seat pans for a big motor case. Then you could put batteries in the center tunnel and more of them in the engine bay/frunk.

Robin W.

I kept the A/C, even though I'm in Canada, the previous owner spent a fortune making it work again so it was working well at the start of the conversion. I started with it running off the tailshaft of the motor, however a small 3 phase motor/controller to drive the stock A/C or one of the fancy Masterflux units with compressor and motor in one.

I'm not a fan of lead acid powered cars, I did my testing on lead but after changing to lithium the difference is amazing. Always cool to see more electric 944's though!

If you are willing to give up the rear seat that's a good idea. If I was going to do something like that I'd swap out the transaxle completely in favour of an efficient FWD transmission where you could mount the motor side to side vs front to back.

V2Rocket

actually thats a pretty good idea, and with a FWD trans you really wouldnt need to touch the seats anyways.

GM's 4T65 or 4t80 or whatever it is should be able to take plenty of motor torque and is a reliable automatic, and its only like a foot deep from BH to end of case.

Voith

Few gallons of sulfuric acid all the way around me was always my wet dream.

Robin W.

When I got the notification of new posts in this thread I thought it's a bit overdue for a bit of an update.

This spring I got the car running nicely on the full 300v pack, and it simply transformed the car!

After some tuning and tweaking I was able to get in a few 0-60mph runs to test the performance. The car is an '86 NA with a turbo transmission and a final weight of 3000lbs. I can do 0-60mph in 2nd gear with no shifting and I was getting consistent times of 4.8 seconds. That's with 215 wide 15" rubber, even starting in 2nd I had traction issues and had to be gentle off the line. With some decent rubber and a full throttle launch I'm sure the car would have been capable of 4.4 seconds. That's of course a guess and is meaningless if I can't actually do it.

Now on to the bad.... there are only a hand full of people with high power DC conversions that aren't just drag strip cars. I started to have motor issues due to brush dust build up within the motor which in the end cause a plasma fireball in the motor damaging insulation, causing a short and giving the controller a fault.

Because of this I'm pulling the DC motor/controller and swapping in an AC induction motor/3 phase inverter to make a reliable daily driver. The AC motor has less power but still a decent 220ft-lbs of torque from 0 rpm and decent power up to 7500rpm but could spin up to 10,000rpm if I thought the transmission could handle it. It will have regenerative braking which will remove most of the wear from the mechanical brakes and let me recapture a bit of the energy I use when accelerating. I'm going to get the DC system fixed and will likely keep it for a future project. I think that system would be amazing in something like a factory five 818.

One thing I find kind of cool is that the american made, crude but very powerful air cooled DC motor is out in favour of the much more refined water cooled German (Siemens) motor that's going in.

Carrera51

The one from Road Atlanta belongs to the director of NASA SE, Jim Pantas. His son and some other guys built it as a school project. I drove it around the paddock. It was like driving a 944 golf cart. Lots of torque.

steel968

I'm really excited about your progress on this. I want a fun electric daily commuter and I think this is the way to do it. I'll watch you progress with this new AC motor, hopefully it's the final solution. At some point, a list of parts you used on the final build would be cool. Think I am gonna start scouring for a used 944.

mytrplseven

I'm trying to figure out how to install a 200 mile extension cord.

Giantviper

They Had a Electic 944 on the American Top Gear the Other night. If I remeber correctly it did a sub 12 second Quater mile. Looked to be very fast!

Was kind of cool to see a 944 on the show even though it is no were near as good as the british version.

Fara

Yeah, the 944 on TG USA was a Lawless EV.
From what I saw, it looks like it's been converted to a standard gearbox instead of the Transaxle.

It ran 11.028 @124.96

locke

as far as weight and placement of battery issue, why not install a microturbine generator? sure, it would still need a fuel, diesel can be a good fuel for it. I might be heavier than batterys if it's just slapped together, but the vehicle's range would be significantly better over all.

blown 944

I saw that too. All I could think of is that I am not tge qyickest anymore. Need to go faster now.

Seriously though, I love the idea and would love to k iw more about the car.