More driving
Today I made a motor brace that will hopefully keep the motor from rotating. It’s only 1/8″ aluminum, but that was easy to cut and bend. If it works out I’ll have it remade for me in steel from Fabricator Mike for extra strength. I also replaced the rubber bushing on the front motor mount with a coupling nut sandwiched between the metal plates. Hopefully that makes it more rigid and will also keep the motor from twisting.
After that I of course had to do some more test drives to see if the modifications worked. They were better than last time and I’m getting closer to isolating the vibration. If is pin the motor with the car in neutral it seems off balance. The flywheel and clutch could be the cause so to find out if that it is I will need to pull the transmission and spin the motor with the flywheel detached. If that is the case I don’t know how it will be fixed. I imagine a flywheel can be balanced off the motor. If the motor is balanced and the flywheel is balanced then it should all be good.
The vibrations are worst in 1st gear and lessen as I go into the higher gears. For neighborhood driving I realized it works best just to leave it in 4th (like most people say). It is smooth and has no trouble starting from a stop in fourth.
The power steering motor blew another fuse, this time 25 amps. I need to go to thicker wire before I try a bigger fuse. I’m also seeing that manual steering with the power rack isn’t too bad so a manual rack is appealing because it has a higher ratio and should be even easier. The bonus is that I won’t need a motor to turn the pump so the car will be quieter. All that will be running at stop would be the blower for the motor and it is pretty quiet.
Batteries are charging, need to get them all the way filled up before I do anymore driving. They dropped to 12.4 V after the first drives.
The speedomoter and odometer do not work but we went about 4 miles today. Tried to install the ammeter but I was reminded that the controller has capacitors and slowly discharges. It will do so through your finger if you present the opportunity.