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UPDATE: The Leaf Has Arrived! Thanks everyone for taking an interest in the project, things are starting to move along now, the Leaf I ordered just arrived a few minutes ago Hopefully in the next few days I can get the motor, battery pack, and anything else I might need pulled from the car. Yeah, I was looking into past conversions people have done to old Subarus, apparently 15-20 years ago someone put a forklift motor into a 3rd gen wagon for a solar powered car, things have definitely changed now that we have readily available wrecked production EVs to pull parts from sadly no, I was just planning on sending the rolling body to the junkyard after I get what I need from it, though if anyone in the Denver area wants it sans drivetrain for whatever reason, feel free to get in contact with me Yeah, I plan on documenting everything that happens to this car on here as well as maybe a Youtube series on the conversion as well. My goal is to have the car at least moving under its own power in 2 months, which might be a bit ambitious given my lack of knowledge on these things besides intermediate self-taught experience with mechanics and electronics, but I hope to have the car ready for an EV show in August at the latest As far as the adapter plate goes, Angus (the gentleman who runs that site) was kind enough to design this updated version of the adapter plate for me, it uses the bell housing off of the EA81 for proper spacing and mating to the transmission bell housing. Actually that reminds me, if anybody is interested in 2 parts EA-81s (one with blown HG, one seized) and an unknown condition EA-82, I'm planning on selling the parts I have off to anyone interested, ditto the fuel tank, exhaust and any associated parts once I get those pulled from the GL again just contact me with an offer

We didn't do a lot of sightseeing as that wasn't the main point of the trip but it was good. I guess we've set the bar high (low?) enough that a broken first gear and having to hotwire the ignition relay don't qualify as serious breakdowns. One of the reasons I'm doing the 6MT swap now is that the 5MT that was in the car only has about 30k miles on it (it was out of a crash test car). I've actually been trying to be easy on first and reverse the last couple years but it still broke. So that's probably a best case scenario, put in a 5MT with 100-200k miles on it and who knows how long it would last. To make it easier to install the 6MT I made this tilting bracket. I might upgrade the screw before I use it again but it worked OK. I fabricated a new trans crossmember. First the old one wasn't going to bolt up. Looking at it later I realized I may have just been able to drill a couple new holes in it. The other main reason though was to stiffen up the car. The stock one is three pieces rubber mounted together. I wanted something that might help body strength. First step was machining these bushings. The two on the right go under the trans mount. The two on the left bolt to the body behind the control arms. The flats are to reduce weight and make tube fitting easier. Also made some brackets to bolt into the other trans crossmember brackets and connected it all with tubing. Had the exhaust in place to make sure I cleared that. I made some brackets to bolt into some holes I'd previously drilled in the engine crossmember and ran tubes forward to them. It would have been a little better to have them on top of that flange of the crossmember so the tube is pushing on it rather than hanging off the bottom but then I would have had to put a big bend in the tubes to clear the trans. Welded about 3/4 of it while bolted in and let it sit and cool off before removing it. I was pleasantly surprised that it didn't seem to have warped at all, it dropped out very easily so it will probably bolt back up fairly easily. Finished welding out of the car and trimmed some things with the grinder. Even with those braces to the engine crossmember it's about a pound lighter than the stock crossmember. The angle iron and tab/gusset are for mounting a skidplate to protect the trans pan. Already have that cut out. Have to finishing painting. In the meantime I'm going to replace the rear wheel bearings and seals and parking brake cables while it's all apart. Have to put in the R180, assemble a couple axles with conversion races, and double check driveshaft fit. It's still quite a bit more work but I'm looking forward to finally being able to drive the car hard.