The case of the transposed shift pattern, or why I couldn't find first gear..

Upon inspection of the shift lever I realized there is a critical difference between the shift linkage of the 915 transmission of the early cars and the G50 shifter for the later 1988-89 Carreras. The shift lever of the 915 transmission has the pivot point located above the linkage rod and the G50 shifter pivots from below.

G50 shift lever on the Left, and older 915 lever on the Right.

The previous owner had a machine shop manufacture the adapter plate for the 915 transmission which mates with the warp 11 motor. Apparently they also made an adapter to mate the G50 shift rod with the 915 gear selector. 

Its a nice looking piece of work, but I can't handle a shift pattern that looks like this

R  4  2 

5 3  1

   

So I ordered a 915 shift lever and rod on ebay to match the transmission.

Illumination and Progress (Finally....)

I think we have determined the reason for the salvage title. There must have been a small (gas?) fire in the front trunk area, that scorched the hood and fenders. the PO did a nice rattle can job, but it clearly wasn't going to last.

So, the front fenders were stripped and painted to prevent further rust. At the same time I had some extra cross bar re-enforcement welded into the frame to support the batteries in the trunk (more to come in a future post). After almost a year of little progress I have gotten fed up and I took the unfinished body tub back from the mechanic whom I couldn't get to complete the job and had it painted. Unfortunately the color match was not as good as I would like. Next time the whole car will see paint.

Atleast now I can start the fun part, working on the electrical and getting the car roadworthy. The most gratifying experience of the whole project so far was driving the car onto the trailer under its own power. One 12V deep cycle battery produced enough torque to drive the car onto the trailer (albeit very slowly and in first gear). 

After some much needed paint on the front fenders. its time to start re-installing everything that was stripped. First on the agenda was the headlights. The headlights are one of the most iconic features of the 911 (whale tail aside), and the reason I love the styling of this vehicle.

I didn't like the yellowed look of the old lights, so I opted for a new set of Hella H4 Vision Plus lenses. The added bonus of upgrading the Lenses is that I can choose any color bulbs in the future.

 This finished product looks much better!

Next up on the agenda is getting power to the lights. The wiring harness was a mess.

The Battery Charger is Alive

Back in November I took the plunge and bought a 10kW electric charger kit from Valery at EMW.
http://www.emotorwerks.com/

The open source charger is based on Arduino microprocessor. Details about the charger design can be found at DIY electric forum.
http://www.diyelectriccar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=59210
and here
http://www.emotorwerks.com/VMcharger_V12P/

I ended up scavenging a box from an old dead laser power supply. The inductors are mounted with 2" pipe hangers from ace hardware, with a strip of HDPE (from an old cutting board) underneath.   I opted to use a contactor with 200 ohm pre-charge resistor at the input. If you decide to use a coil relay be sure to put a suppression diode. Otherwise you will kill the BJT driver. Ask me how I know. 

  All in all the kit was pretty complicated to assemble, mostly due to the lack of instructions (which have been vastly improved since I undertook the project). I went slowly and tried check everything at each stage of the build process. 

I still managed to solder one of the capacitors backwards on the driver board, but fortunately caught my mistake quickly (while testing with 12V only) and therefore I only had to replace the one capacitor.

The PFC input worked perfectly, boosting the input voltage to approximately 375V

The first test of the charger was a success running on 120V AC I was able to deliver 1.4kW to the electric load used for testing. Next step is to find a 240V outlet to test full power 10kW.

First look at the rolling chassis

I am writing this blog to start documenting my attempt to convert a 1988 Porsche 911 into a battery electric vehicle. Inspired by reading Joey's Blog (on a similar topic ;-) ), I decided it was time to start recording my progress. If for nothing else, at-least it might help me remember.

I bought this project on Ebay as a partial conversion including the Warp 11 motor and Soliton 1 controller.

I was told that the car did run once. It had 15 lead acid batteries, 8 in the rear and 7 in the front. However as purchased it had no usable batteries.

Stay tuned for progress on this project, the restoration, and upgrade to lithium ion cells.