The bed finally hinged

We finally got the bed hinged. Harder than it seems, it took a bit of time to balance the bed vertically and align the bed to the frame rails. Anyway, just wanted to share another small step toward the completion of our Ranger conversion.

Nine years of winning!

We just took this picture of the MR2 and the trophies we have won over the last 9 years in the SMARTT Challenge and at the Northampton East EV Rally. We hope to continue our winning ways this May 14-15th at the final event in Raleigh.

Bed prep and hinge

Yesterday we took the bed off the truck and prepared it for the Herculiner bed lining. The bed was also hinged for easy access to the batteries. With the some extra room under the bed now, we are now designing battery boxes for optimum placement and drawing the designs as a solid model on Inventor to determine where to place battery boxes. We are planning to have the bed raised by a linear actuator if we can determine the correct geometry.

Out with old, in with the new

Eariler this week, we recieved our new adapter plate and motor mount for the truck . We have taken the coupler design to be machined at a local machine shop, Atlantic Tool and Die Company in Hampstead. They will be making revisions to an older design we had from a previous conversion, and creating a new coupler to fit our Ranger transmission.

We also had to grind off an inch and a half of the input shaft of the transmission so the electric motor shaft would clear the input shaft when the motor and tranny were attached. It really made sparks fly!

Truck and transmission back from blasting

We got the truck back from getting a blast from the past. The transmission and drive shaft were bead blasted and the truck rails were also blasted in preparation for painting. The engine compartment was pressure washed to remove all of the oil and grease build-up that had occurred over the past 9 years of driving. We now can begin designing the battery box and engine compartment control board.