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Hi all, I'd like to introduce you to my current project: This is Gladys, my 1987 GL hatchback. I bought her in August of 2021 and she was a wonderful car to have, until she blew her first engine in late October. Two more engines and a blown HG later, she has been sitting on a friend's property for the past several months awaiting her new engine, or rather, her new motor. See, I plan to replace the gas engine in this car with an electric drivetrain out of a Nissan Leaf. Part of the reason its taken so long to get this project moving has been waiting to find a suitable donor car in my price range (>$3,000 USD) but just a couple of days ago I was fortunate enough to get my hands on this crashed 2015 Leaf from Copart for a grand total of around $2,800 So in this thread I'm planning on documenting the swap and any problems or workarounds I'm encountering as I go along. The basic plan for the build is to take the motor from the leaf and mate it onto the existing 4 speed transmission using an adapter plate made by Angus over at http://bratindustries.net, who performed a similar swap on a 1983 BRAT (a little off topic, but he used the third eye mechanism to hide the fast charging port which I think is really neat). Since it's not strictly necessary with an electric drivetrain I'm forgoing the clutch in favor of a direct connection from the motor to the transmission. I then plan to power it using the battery pack from the leaf, stored in the back since I'm planning on a rear seat delete to preserve space and weight. The whole system will charge from a standard J1772 charging port located where the filler neck used to be. I intend to keep the look of the car as stock as possible inside, going so far as to replace the modified center console with an aftermarket head unit that was in the car with a stock unit I was able to find on eBay along with a factory cassette deck. the accelerator will hook up to the control electronics through the throttle cable and the stock gauge cluster will remain unmodified save for allowing the fuel gauge to read out the battery's state of charge. Should this project all go as planned, the car should have the equivalent of a 107hp motor with 184 lb/ft of torque and about 60 miles of range, give or take some thanks to regenerative braking. Of course if I want more range I might decide to upgrade the battery later on down the line, though I think this should be plenty sufficient for the time being. I plan to use as much from the Leaf as possible, but I'll use third party components to get stuff like the brake booster working on battery power Now, this project is still very much in the early stages even though I'm months in already, but I'm happy to answer any questions you might have about the project, as well as taking any suggestions you might have about how to get the conversion done

The leaking heater core has been bypassed and I likely won't need any heat or defrosters again until next winter so I'm driving it for now and will schedule a fix later. Too many other projects. The repaired aftermarket radiator went back in and has been leak-free for about a month so fingers crossed. We've already been seeing temps in the 80's so time will tell if it makes it through the summer. I found a nice cargo bag at a thrift store and used it over the weekend. It rolls up and fits perfectly in the storage compartment in the floor so a nice fit and under $10. We stopped at a local car show on the way home Saturday and got quite a few people checking out the wagon. https://photos.app.goo.gl/z6vpYcdcHgQgX3C1A

This is a Nice Project, please share Photos with us as it goes. Saw the Brat industries website, very interesting... Kind Regards.

Do you have the skills to turn the undamaged section of the Leaf into a trailer ?

Nice color!

The best option I've seen is to redrill to 4x114. I have a set and as I remember there used to be a thread on how to do it. If I remember Loyale 2.7 turbo said he did it.

November 2010: Today: Survivor! https://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/topic/173379-the-green-machine/