Big Update

I have been fairly busy with upgrades on the Electric Booger.

While the motor was out I decided to build a cooling system for the controller. The controller never gets very hot, but I figured since I had a small 12 volt fan kicking around, I may as well. Here is a video showing the new cooling system:

In the meantime I sent the motor drive end cap and old adapter plate to my machinist friend Matt to drill and bolt together. This is one thing that I did not trust myself to get absolutely perfect. Once the adapter plate was mounted to the new motor I was able to take some measurements for Matt to use for the new coupler. The new coupler is made of the same clutch centre as the old one, but this time it is welded to the splined shaft stolen from the hydraulic pump that this motor used to drive. Once again Matt has made me a work of art!

What are the two bolts for? They are pickup teeth for the new tachometer speed sensor. Matt gave me a proximity sensor in order to make the factory tachometer functional. This is basically a digital on/off switch that turns on when there is metal nearby:

All I am doing to make the tach functional is switch 12V on and off to the tach signal wire that used to go the negative side of the ignition coil. Here is how I tested it out:

I spun my cordless drill up with this bit on and held the sensor close to it. I need two pickup teeth because this car had a four cylinder engine so there were four pickup teeth in the distributor running at half engine speed, meaning I need two teeth if they are running at actual motor speed. It says "0-1300 RPM" on the side of my drill and the tach was at 1200 RPM. Close enough for me!

Here is the speed sensor mounted to the adapter plate:

When installing this new motor I had to fabricate a mount point for the right side motor mount. I finally decided to simply weld a 3/8" bolt to the bearing cap. The bearing cap isn't exactly a strong mounting point, but all this mount has to do is locate the motor/transmission at the proper angle, so there is not much weight on it. Anyway, since I would probably weld giant holes into this thin plate, I let Mike at work do it, who could probably weld wood to a mattress if he had to.

After installing the motor and hooking everything back up, I decided to run the motor at 2000 RPM for an hour. Since I rotated the brush holder there is a good chance that I did not get it fully centred to the armature. Running it for a while at no load helps to break the brushes in. Here is a video: