[Lowcoe]

Job 1. Clean out all the rat poop and remove old engine and transmission.

 

[Lowcoe]

For fun I bought a old produce scale and weighed each component that was removed. Any and all seals and rubber on the car had given up the ghost. I did some research on dimensions of the Tesla LDU and battery dimensions and began planning out the layout. I wanted to use a full Tesla Pack to have hope of having acceptable range.

 

[Lowcoe]

I picked up a LDU from Tesla Parts in El Cajon. Henry is a nice guy, very busy. I began rebuilding the axles…

 

[Lowcoe]

First iteration of the battery box was Home Depot racking angle iron and thin sheet aluminum. It became apparent that that wasn’t gonna cut it…This was about the point I considered going another direction.

 

[57Chevy]

Love it. Last time I sat in a LWB Landy I was 4yo and was right at the back on the sideways seat with no tail door. Driver went over a speed hump a bit fast and I was thrown up off the seat and not that far from falling out. Still traumatised.

Are you going to run one driveshaft back and one forward from the Tesla diff to the Landy diffs? The top speed will be very low doing that, anything over about 8000rpm runs field weakening and will overheat the motor/reduce power a lot/be rather inefficient. Or do you have a replacement gear ratio kit?

 

[Lowcoe]

This style conversion has been done before. You can find snippets here and there. My hope is that by posting this it will help others who want to persue a similar conversion. To answer your question, yes the motor is mounted turned 90* so that one shaft powers the front axle, one the rear. Recommendation is to swap out the differential for a Quaife limited slip version, a gearset that improves the ratio, and an internal oil pump housing that accounts for the motor primary running reversed from factory… but your getting ahead of the story David.

 

[Lowcoe]

First big frustration was trying to get the motor to spin. I had already blown the budget ( ok I never calculated a budget) and was only just getting started. The cheapest option by far for getting the Tesla LDU motor to spin was replacing the mother board with a version from open inverter. Venmo’d my money and patiently waited for it to arrive from Ireland. Upon arriving , some assembly required. Fine soldering of components onto the motherboard is necessary to get around some sort of import restrictions. I created a bench to test things on and as I didn’t have the money for the batteries I wired a few car batteries in series for testing purposes..

 

[Lowcoe]

While working on the motor spinning issue I would take a break and work on other projects in tandem. Axles all back together, brakes rebuilt, rubbers and felts replaced around windows. The rodent urine smell is mostly gone as well. I began working on battery box design 2.0. Making boxes out of 3/4 plywood, and then a version 3.0 version out of 1/8 plywood. The plan was to use a full pack, 16 Tesla modules. 12 up front in the engine bay and 4 out back where the gas tank used to live. I also found that there was space between the frame rails and above the gas tank to house a control box for contractors,BMS, battery charger ETC…

 

[Lowcoe]

About this time the Quaife LSD arrived in the mail. The motor was cracked open and gearset, oil pump and LSD were swapped out. Kind of a big project but there’s several YouTube videos out that cover it pretty well. Oh yeah, somewhere in here I got a lift because I was tired of crawling around on the floor. Helpful but you still crawl around a lot

 

[Lowcoe]

So it was time for a battery, battery costs about as much as an old 56 Chevy with a 30 year old restoration. As I no longer love the smell of exhaust, it was a trade I was ready to make. Kids are still a little upset about it but that’s life…

 

[Lowcoe]

Battery tear down was fun. It has a very distinct smell. It’s the new gas/ grease smell for me. Was able to mock up the battery setup in the 3/4 ply box and get a better sense of how the boxes should end up and where all the penetrations should go.

 

[Lowcoe]

This is kind of a high level review of my progress over the last 2 years. Kinda documenting so that I remember. Once I had all the batteries I took another crack at getting the open inverter MCU to spin the motor. Many hours, much frustration, no luck. It had a jenky wi fi connection and I can’t be sure all my soldering was up to snuff.. I began looking for another solution….
In the pictures you can see I sorted out the drive lines. A family friend was able to turn down the ends of the axle shafts and weld on a flange that accepted the standard u joint.
All new low voltage wiring was run all lights will be LED.

 

[Lowcoe]

About now I was getting serious about a battery box solution. I enlisted same family friend to design and produce boxes out of 3/16 aluminum. After sitting on it for several months he came to me and said it was over his head but he had a buddy that works at a very well known San Diego EV shop that could do it. He passed me off to his buddy who spoke to me once or twice. I could never pin him down on a price. After pressing him a few times things fizzled out. So you know what they say.. if you want something done something something you have to do it yourself. I got on this website called Fiver and found a guy in Sri Lanka that goes by ElectroCad to help me draft up the control box. Plans were sent to send cut send and then I welded aluminum for the first time ever using my MIG welder…
The notch was to make sure the Differential
Didn’t hit the control box under extreme travel.
Inside the control box is a panel that all the components are mounted on. This is offset from the base by a couple nuts this allows for tapping mounting screws without penetrating the box and has been invaluable as I have moved most of the components multiple times trying to get the best layout. There will be a 12x14 access panel that will allow last minute bms connections and fuse changes even with rear battery box stacked underneath.

Also I still continued trying to breath life into the motor getting the computer as close as I could to get a reliable WiFi connection…. Aww Nuts…

 

[Lowcoe]

About this time I was trying to find another VCU/MCU solution. Most vendors want you to buy a package from them Tested Tesla LDU and whatever system they’re running. In hindsight I should have gone this route. I was trying to save money but it definitely hasn’t turned out that way…I ended up going with an east coast vendors top of the line system that comes with a large IPad for navigation, tire pressure monitors etc… Dropped a large chunk of change…. It’s been 6 months and I still haven’t received the system. Lots of empty promises. Do your research. If I had to do it over from where I’m at I would have chosen EV controls TC2 system and I may still have to do that…

 

[Lowcoe]

More design of the battery boxes. This time I got my nephew involved as it turns out he works a a metal fab shop. Still used Electro_Cad for primary design but my nephew was able to tweak a few things here and there…If anyone is interested I have all the files for all the boxes.

 

[Lowcoe]

More pics

 

[remy_martian]

Love the build log and your packaging solutions, though 3/4 plywood almost costs as much as aluminum these days.

Jackstands...who needs 'em when you have a PC?

😂

 

[57Chevy]

Could I perhaps suggest to destructively test some weld samples using the same technique and level of cleanliness as used on the battery box? I have seen bad things happen to that style of welding after about a year. There is very little vibration resistance so they fracture off slowly over time and eventually part company without warning.

 

[remy_martian]

"That style of welding?"

You mean using a spool gun?

Pulling vs pushing the weld and not using pure Argon (vs 75/25) will mess up strength, but otherwise...same difference.

Good comparison here, including weld cross section & etch analysis: