So much fun, let's do it again

As mentioned earlier, the next conversion project is my dad's Ford Ranger. The guys at Vision Steel hopped right on it, and already have all the big parts out and have cleaned up the chassis. This should be considerably easier than the BMW. Lots of access to the frame, more depth under the hood, etc. The other benefit is that all of the core electric components are the same and VS already has 2D files for the mounting brackets for motor, pump, etc. Here's some pix. I'll post the design goals in a separate post.

Yabba Dabba Do

As if ripping the engine out of a functioning vehicle and selling off pieces wasn't committment enough, now I've really gone past the point of no return. Up until now, it still would've been plausible to salvage a V6 from some other bimmer, and pretend like the whole goal of the project had been to upgrade from the stock 4cyl to a hot-rod V6.

Not anymore. Now we're into ripping sheetmetal! At this point, we're ready to head off to the drive-in for a rack of dinosaur ribs Flintstone style!

We cut the floor out of the trunk so we can lower the rear batteries. This is the beginning of planning the structure of the battery box. We'll start on the front layout and battery box(es) once we have the motor installed.

The Pull Continues

This weekend, work continued on pulling parts. Saturday 1/10 I got the transmission separated from the engine. Now I need to get it to the car-wash to get it cleaned up.

Today I finally got the gas tank off. On this car, the tank is a single molded plastic tank with two "lobes" that sit like saddlebags on either side of the driveshaft under the rear seat bench. The thing that makes taking this thing down tricky is the fact that the e-brake cables run underneath it and the driveshaft runs underneath it. This means that you can't take it out in one piece unless you take those three parts off first.

After going through two or three 16mm sockets trying to get the brake caliper bolts off so I could get the calipers off so I could get the rotors off the rear wheels so I could get the e-brake cable end off the e-brake shoes (inside the disk...) so I could pull the cable off the back so i could pull it out from underneath the gas tank...whew...I decided to cut the gas tank in two and pull it out on either side of the shaft and cables.

It took a couple of hours to get the tank cut down the middle. Of course I was trying to be very careful to avoid making sparks whilst hacking through this thing. Now that it's done, I'm trying very hard to not think about potential ways this little task could've gone wrong.

The Big Pull

On Saturday the 3rd of January, we got serious. My buddy James came over to help me pull the engine and transmission out. Actually, it was much more like James was pulling the engine and I was handing him tools as he asked for them, and keeping his coffee warm.

It went real well. He all the necessary gear to make it smooth. I had disconnected most of the hoses and wires in advance. There were a few that were too hard to get to. I had been trying to keep everything together so that the engine might be installable in someone else's car with little or no rework. However, there was one bundle of fuel injector sensor and controller wires that was too hard to reach. So, we got the wire cutters out and snipped a big bundle of stuff. That bundle and the heater hoses were the only real casualties of the removal.

First Steps

The weekend before Thanksgiving, I got started on the teardown. The hood came off, and the battery came out. I don't know how detailed I'll be on each step of the way, but this was fairly simple.

The weekend after Thanksgiving, I got the exhaust system down and out of the way. While down there, I took off miscellaneous heat shields and stuff that won't be necessary in a setup without the exhaust pipe running the length of the car.