DAVID HEACOCK's 1985 AVANTI EV CONVERSION (IN PROCESS)
An Advanced DC 9 inch motor was decided upon to drive the Avanti since some of the reference material available indicated it would be adequate for an EV up to 5000 pounds. Since one of my goals was to keep the total weight of the finished vehicle to 4000 pounds or less it seemed reasonable to used this motor. The major concern was how to connect the motor to the Harley transmission. A friend of my brother, who had his own motorcycle and machine shop in the Los Angeles area, was contacted to discuss possible ways to connect the motor, through the Harley primary, to the Harley transmission. The final design was a taper lock connector. This type of connector has been used on other EVs and seemed to be a solid way to connect the motor to the sprocket within the Harley primary. The following pictures show the finished taper lock that slides over the motor shaft. In the first picture of the assembled unit, the narrow end slides over the motor shaft. The second picture shows the sprocket with the hub, which has six split sections.
The completed taper lock unit is mated to the Harley sprocket and as the three mounting bolts are tightened and the two sections are drawn together, the taper lock tightens down over the motor shaft. The following pictures show the taper lock adapter installed over the motor shaft with the first picture showing the motor shaft before the taper lock and sprocket were installed and the second picture with the sprocket installed. As it turned out I later had to remove the taper lock because I needed to seal an oil leak coming from the primary case. This proved to be a fairly straight forward process where I simply loosened the three bolts and then tapped on each of them until the rear hub separated from the front sleeve, thus releasing the grip on the motor shaft.
The next step was to provide a mounting system to support the motor, primary and the Harley transmission. Again, the shop in Los Angeles came to the rescue and designed and built the necessary mounts made out of aluminum to limit weight. The following pictures show the mounts supporting the drive train.
At this point I have to say the shop did an outstanding job providing the completed system, which as far as I know, had not been previously developed.
It was now time to mount the drive train to the Avanti frame after the modifications to install the Corvette rear end were completed. I again turned to my local shop where a platform was made to support the drive train and allow for tensioning of the drive chain from the transmission to the rear end. A special adapter for connecting a sprocket to the Corvette rear end was made by another friend of my brother. It is always nice to have a brother who has the connections to build the necessary components. The following picture shows the mounting platform for the motor, primary and transmission. Notice the hinge on the left side of the platform and the large adjusting nuts on the right side of the platform used to tension the drive chain.
The following pictures show the sprocket adapter for connecting the sprocket to the rear end and the completed connection.
The completed drive train was then installed on the modified Avanti frame as shown in the following pictures. A test run was made while the Avanti frame was still at the shop by hooking a 12 volt battery to the motor and to everyone's relief, the wheels turned as planned. After filling the Corvette rear end, the Harley primary and the Harley transmission with oil additional test runs were made for brief periods of time.