Engine Compartment Cabling and Motor-Transaxle Mounting

May 1, 2011 - I took off Friday so I'd have a three day weekend to work on the car and got quite a good bit accomplished as a result. To start with, I finished the low-voltage wiring and the high-voltage cabling completed to a point where I could mount the motor/transaxle. To finish up, with a little help from neighbor Tony, we were able to mount the Motor/Transaxle firmly to the body.

What was exciting is that cabling the engine compartment indicates that I am not far from the end. I can begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel so to speak. I started with the emergency breaker and cabled from it to the contactor and rear positive terminal block. And then from the contactor to the controller positive battery terminal. I got to use my new Juli YYQ-120A hydraulic crimper that I ordered from EVWorks in Australia for about $80 but with shipping via boat it came to around $135. I think Harbor Freight has its little brother for about $50 but I wanted something a little bit stouter. My first two attempts failed until I realized that the die they indicated to use for 2/0 cables was way to big for my connectors. So I used the next size die down which is for #1 cable and got really nice crimps. Here's the a shot of the crimping tool:



Here's a shot of the contactor cabled:



It may seem intuitive or obvious to some but you only put the terminal connectors on one end of each cable. Install the cable into the vehicle and then mark the top of the cable at the unterminated end. Then take the cable out and crimp on the connector so that the top of the connector lines up with your mark on the cable. This is so that you won't have to twist the cable unnaturally and put undue torsion stress on any connection point. And a shot of the emergency breaker cabled:



And a shot of the rear positive terminal block cabled. A cable from the front pack will connect to this terminal block as well.



And then a shot of it all:



So here's the motor/transaxle getting ready to go in. I forgot to attach the engine cross-member to the motor-mount before I took the pic.



It took a little bit of wrangling but thanks to the tranmission scissor jack and regular jack, Tony and I were able to raise the motor/transaxle up high enough to firstly attach the transaxle to it's mounts.



Once the transaxle mount points were slightly tightened, we were able to raise the motor end so that the cross-member end-points touched the mounts points. We slipped the 3/8" bolts into the mount points and cross-member end-points and snugged them up.



The rest of these shots are of the motor sitting pretty in the engine compartment. Here's a shot from the left side of the car:



And a shot from the top of the car looking down into the engine compartment facing rearward:



And finally a shot from the right side of the car:





There are so many things to do next I won't begin to list them here but think about what next to attack during the upcoming week. Until then, Caio!