Solar Powered Electric Vehicle

Moving on to the battery racks… My plan to fit 20 6V batteries did not pan out, I could not come up with a design that I liked to fit 20 batteries on the car. Instead, I opted to do a 18 8-V pack: from front of the car to back, 2 in the front compartment where the AC grill is; 5 in the front trunk; 2 in the fuel tunnel; 9 in the engine compartment on top of the motor/transmission.

I also decided to use aluminum instead of steel to save weight (Steel is 3x heavier than Aluminum), I estimate that this will save me about 70 lbs.

The downside of using Aluminum is that the material is much harder to weld than steel, however, depending on the type and the treatment on the aluminum, it has better resistance to acid spills from the batteries. We started with the front compartment 5-battery rack and designed the rack using rivets.

The last mount needed to be custom because the original mount was connected to the engine, which is now gone.  Thanks to my friend Alan’s help, we designed the mount first out of scrap wood and then welded steel.

Taking a grinder, I removed the interfering material from the adaptor plate.

To repair the damaged rubber in the original engine mounts, I found a guy that sold these molded urethane inserts for $50.

I also spray painted the mounts.

And mounted the transmission back into the engine bay.

That takes care of 3 of the 4 mounts, next I move on to making the 4th custom mount for the motor.

Here are some pictures of the old engine that was removed and finally sold. What a dirty mess!