Let me bring you up to date…
Those of you following the progress of the EV Escort, might wonder what happened to it? There were regular updates over the summer till July, then silence. Well I hit a number of road blocks that slowed my progress, but work has resumed on the car.
To bring you up to date, the first weekend in August I went to New Hampshire to pick up my 9" Advanced DC motor from Bob Batson at EVAmerica. I had a very good visit with Bob. He’s done a lot to help promote the cause of EV’s, and he’s a good supplier to deal with. We talked extensively, and he took me for a ride in his EV Bradley GT. This was to demonstrate what the Curtis 1231C "whine" actually sounded like. The noise was brief, only at low speeds, not very loud, and not too objectionable.
At the same time I placed an order for an adapter plate and coupler for my Escort. I mailed off my flywheel to have it balanced and trimmed. What then followed was a little discouraging. I was first told to expect the parts in the middle of August. They didn’t come then. There were some more delays, and I finally got my parts in the start of September. I don’t mind that it took a month to get my parts, what I minded was being told the parts would be delivered earlier and then not having the parts show up. At a certain point I turned the matter over to Bob Batson, he took care of it very well, even Emailing me on the latest UPS status of the package when it was shipping. Below you'll see a picture of the flywheel. On the left was how it looked when it came off the motor, on the right is how it looked after trimming and balancing.
Then it was my turn to have problems. Installing the motor was a job I was doing with my Dad. He had taken some trips with my Mom and had some family business he needed to take care of. As a result we didn’t get a chance to work on the car till the start of October. We had two goals that weekend: install the manual steering rack, and install the electric motor. (The picture below shows the parts needed to couple the DC motor to the transmission. Starting from top left, the pressure plate, the clutch disk, the trimmed and balanced flywheel. Lower left you have the adapter ring that mounts to the electric motor and the adapter plate that mounts to the bell housing of the transmission.)
Work Weekend in October
The first thing to do was change the power steering rack for a manual rack. The rack is located behind the motor against the firewall, so it’s easiest to take care of before the motor is put in. You might recall that the electric motor is not the ideal way to run a power steering pump, so I opted to replace the power rack with a manual rack. I thought the change would be simple and straightforward: just replace the power rack with a manual rack. (Below you see the old power rack on top, and the manual rack below.)
I took off the old rack, started to install the new rack. I had problems. Clearly the rack design was not one of Ford's better ideas.
Let me say this in retrospect: if you want to convert an Escort, find an Escort with manual steering. Failing that, got to the junkyard and remove the parts yourself, and make sure you have EVERYTHING you need.
I just bought a rack from a junkyard, and figured, "No problem. The only different part is the rack." WRONG. The size of the brackets that hold the rack to the firewall are different between the power steering and manual steering rack. The size of the shaft coming out of the manual steering rack is different from the power rack. The "gromit" that the shaft goes through is different. The universal that connects from the power steering rack to the steering column was different.
It was clear early on that we wouldn’t get the rack in, which meant we wouldn’t get the motor in. It was pretty much a wasted weekend. I did bolt together all the motor parts, and run it with a 12 volt car battery. It was good to see the motor run.
I went to a junkyard that had a nice assortment of Escorts. The good thing about Escorts is, they’re a cheap car. If the motor blows or you get into an accident, you don’t fix it, you junk it. As a result there were a lot of Escorts in good shape to pick parts from. I found one that had the motor pulled, so that it was very easy to get at the rack and get the parts I needed.
I had the parts I needed, now I needed to find a weekend when my Dad was free before it got cold this Fall.