Monday, June 18, 2018

Doka Battery Rack, Part 2

Under the bed of the Doka, and behind the cab is a rather large storage space that is perfect for half of the battery cells.
The space is rather deep given the modest opening, so to improve accessibility, the battery racks will be mounted on ball bearing sliders.  The gussets at the top left corner of the space interfere with the racks.  We have to cut notches for clearance, and weld in some structure to keep the bed support strong.
Someone has to go in there to weld the back side of the brackets.  This is Paul.  Watch Paul disappear.
Here the gusset is notched and reinforced.
Here we are aligning the rails on the battery racks.  If these aren't parallel, the slides will bind and not open properly.
The rack is closed.
The rack is open.
The rack is open in the car.  (Apologies the Dr. Seuss and we will have to order some more flat bar to finish up the rest of the right rack.)

Sprite Motor Mount, Part 1

After we slid the motor and transmission in, we had to figure out the bolt sizes of the four transmission cross brace.  It is a job that would have been much easier before we put the motor into the car.  But the internet is a wonderful resource and we were able to narrow it down to 1/4 inch, 5/16ths and 3/8 imperial fine thread.  Here you can see the shifter port coming through the tunnel, and the shiny bit on the vertical wall of the tunnel is a 5/16" x 1" fine thread bolt.
 Two more 3/8" x 3.5" fine thread bolts are installed from under the car, just behind this stack of wood.  The wood is holding the motor in the correct position so that we can take measurements and determine how to fabricate a front motor mount.
 The space is tight, so this is the best shot I could get of the motor face.  There are 3 M10x1.5 mm  tapped holes that can be used to mount the Remy HVH250.
 We start out with two lengths of 1.5" x 1/8" flat bar (38 mm x 3 mm).   Using the motor face as a jig, we grind the parts until all three holes are aligned to the motor face...
...and then weld the parts together. 
Flat bar will not be substantial enough on its own, so the structure is built up with some square tube.
 All the seams are welded.
 Here the mount is shown in position.   We will need to get some shorter bolts.
Up next for the motor mount is to extend square tubing out to the mounting points of the car, and connect to the rubber mounts.

Doka Controller Rack

 We made a little rack for the controller.  There is not much to it: a few lengths of angle iron, some welding, and for the final mounting we will add in some paint and rubber mounts to isolate the controller from road vibration.