Cutting Steel

Electric Motor Mount

After much mechanical "engineering", a scheme has been launched for attaching the electric motor to the gearbox.  Simplicity is the goal and here are some photos.

This is the gearbox and flywheel housing (on the right) mounted.  The gear in the housing is the primary gear that will be attached through a shaft adapter to the electric motor, mounted on the other side.  The adapter is being turned by a local machine shop to fit the primary gear (1.5" bore) and the electric motor shaft (7/8").    The primary gear links to an idler gear which passes motion down to the input gear for the transmission.  I am mixing A and A+ components for the transfer gears, but they are fairly interchangeable except for the idler gears shaft size (3/4").  Luckily, there are bearings that adapt both (1.375" bore in the gearbox).

This is the mounting plate (3/16" steel) for the motor.  The 8 bolts (5/16"x3/4"), located using a piece of acrylic to trace the mounting holes on the flywheel housing, hold this plate to the housing and gearbox.  Next, the mounting holes and shaft hole will be drilled for the motor.

This is the 40HP motor, 38 pounds.  Won't be able to test it for a while.  Must complete the mounting and I am still debating on which controller to use.  More on that later.

Cutting 3/16 steel plating is a slow process using a circular saw with a cut-off blade.  After about 3 cuts, I am now able to cut fairly straight.  A few more covers are needed for the gearbox to go where the block normally would.

This is the Input Gear for the transmission.  It had to be swapped out so the teeth would match those of the idler gear and primary gear.  The classic situation that you change one thing and 3 others have to change.  In this case, the input gear had to be swapped and the idler gear's bearing (shown in the upper right corner of this photo).  Also the input gear's bearing chase on the flywheel cover did't match the bearing which goes on the end of this shaft, so yet another swap-out.  All of these parts are used and so I really can't complain about having to buy a few bearings or adapters.