Adaptation 1

Recently, I have been working on adapting the electric motor to the MX-3's manual transmission. I have decided to go without a clutch, direct driving the transmission input shaft with a simple coupler. Shifting gears may be slightly more difficult without a clutch, but since the electric motor will have much less rotational inertia than the engine it is replacing, it will be doable with a bit of practice.

I started by adding some strength to the mounting configuration of the electric motor. You can see in the picture that there are only three tiny 5/16" threaded holes at the edge of the motor face for mounting stuff to this side of the motor:

Not really strong enough, in my opinion. So I carefully measured and drilled and tapped three more threaded holes, complete with studs, all in 10 X 1.5mm - much bigger and much stronger. Overkill is good, right?

Next I drilled a bunch of holes in my 1/2" aluminum adapter plate and mounted it to the motor:

This is where I am stuck at the moment. I am waiting for a 1" keyed hub to arrive in the mail so I can weld it to the splined centre that I cut out of the clutch friction disk to make a very simple coupler between the motor and the input shaft of the transmission. Princess Auto had every imaginable size except for the size I need (of course), so I had to order it off their website. Speaking of coupler, I hacked the pilot bearing spigot off the end of the transmission input shaft too.

Before:

And after:

It took all of one minute, thanks to my die grinder and cutoff wheel. I'd better watch it - I'm turning into a machinist!