My interest in the electric car, like all my interests, tends to run in cycles. Last July and August I was very interested in the car and did a lot of work on it. As Fall rolled around my interest tapered off and I let the car sit. Now I'm interested in working on it again, but weather wise it's not a good time.
I have designed the "firewall" battery box. So named because it bolts to the passenger side firewall. It's a small box compared to the others, because it only holds two batteries. A drawing of it is below:
You might wonder why the one side is angled. I was working under
very tight space considerations at the bottom of the box. At the
bottom of the box there is 10 5/8" of clearance between the firewall
of the car and the electric motor. The dimension of the battery
is 10 1/4" (plus you have to allow room for expansion of the batter
as it ages) plus 1/8" for the metal in the rack, and you can see
it's very tight at the base of the battery box. At the top of the
box the motor is no longer a factor, so I open the box up to 11 1/4".
This will make it easier to get the batteries in and out of the box.
What you see above is the current design for the firewall battery box. If you click on the image, it's a hyperlink to the old design. The above text in strikeout, is a description of the old design.
This is a modified designed to deal with an overhang on the firewall. To accomodate this, I cut the height of the box short on the backside and moved the hold down bar to the middle of the box. To allow improved access to the battery box, I did away with the front bar on the rack and replaced it with a removeable one. The removeable bar is of 3/16" stock which should make the box more rigid. Since the front is open, I made it straight, not angled. Still the controller board will have to be removed to install and remove these batteries.The real trick to this battery box is not the box itself (actually the box turned out to be harder than I first thought it would be), but the angle iron underneath it. The angle iron support is bolted to the adapter plate on one side and right side of the car on the other. The box bolts directly on to the firewall on one side and rests on the previously mentioned angle iron on the other.
Drilling holes in the firewall and bolting in the box will require taking apart the dash board and removing the heater. Having to remove the heater is not a bad thing. (Having to remove the heater is a bad thing. This page was originally written in January. The first cut of the firewall battery box was done mid-Febentry. The difficulty of tearing apart the dashboard is why it's May as I write this, and after spending a day and a half on the dash board, it's still not all the way out.) I need to replace the old heater core with an electric heater, and this provides the perfect opportunity to do that.
I might be able to work on the car after all. I was visiting a friend of mine at his office, and one of the things that impressed me was his heated garage. On further discussion I found as long as he wasn't using it, I could work on my Escort there. All I have to do is arrange transportation and I'll be able to work on the car come rain or shine.
Then again, I might not. Those of you on the east coast know we just got hit with a big storm. Around here we got about 12 inches. The Escort is now under all that snow, plus there are big piles of snow from where the driveway was plowed blocking the Escort. This might take some time. I did drop the plans for this battery box off with the welder, so at least he can start it.