GLadystein's Monster: Nissan Leaf-Powered GL Hatchback EV Conversion

[SirFireWolfe]

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

Edited March 3, 2023 by SirFireWolfe
fixed grammar/spelling mistakes

[Crazyeights]

I like it! It sounds like a great project.

 

Edited March 12, 2023 by Crazyeights

[1 Lucky Texan]

wow, this take me back to the 70's when people were electrifying old whips with surplus jet engine starter motors and s4!t.

 

so cool.

[Steptoe's photos]

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

 

[Loyale 2.7 Turbo]

This is a Nice Project, please share Photos with us as it goes.

Saw the Brat industries website, very interesting...

 

Kind Regards.

[SirFireWolfe]

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.

On 3/5/2023 at 11:02 AM, 1 Lucky Texan said:

wow, this take me back to the 70's when people were electrifying old whips with surplus jet engine starter motors and s4!t.

 

so cool.

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

21 hours ago, Steptoe's photos said:

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

 

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

18 hours ago, Loyale 2.7 Turbo said:

This is a Nice Project, please share Photos with us as it goes.

Saw the Brat industries website, very interesting...

 

Kind Regards.

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

[SirFireWolfe]

UPDATE 2: Everything Has Been Pulled From the Leaf

Well, that was surprisingly quick and easy, but with just 3 hours of work both the transaxle and the battery pack have been removed from the Leaf.

I had to pull both front tires to get at the driveshafts, but after that it was pretty smooth sailing. After  disconnecting the harness and the connection to the battery pack, the engine came right off the engine mounts really cleanly. Right now, the whole unit is sitting on a furniture dolly until I can get it up to the GL on Saturday

With the motor out, we used the hoist to get the car as high up on the jacks as possible. After then removing the aerodynamic paneling under the car, we then used a couple more dollys on floor jacks to hold up the traction battery while we undid the bolts holding it to the chassis. from there it was easy to lower it to the ground and roll it out

When we rolled it out, there was maybe 3-4mm of space between the top of the pack and the bottom of the car, but it didn't catch on anything thankfully. With the pack removed, the easy part was over, mostly due to the thick rubber seal which surrounds the whole of the steel casing which holds the battery together.

After copious use of a heat gun, several blades, and a completely ruined outer shell, I was able to get access to all the battery cells inside. PLEASE NOTE that this was extremely unsafe and I would not recommend doing any of this without proper safety equipment and expertise. That being said, the battery has been taken apart and now I've got it stored until I can get it into the other car.

[SirFireWolfe]

Real quick update: the parts have been brought over to the GL, once I have a hoist of my own I'll be able to pull the EA-81 from  the car, that'll probably be the next update I post

[1 Lucky Texan]

I've read, probably here, that some folks buy a Harbor Freight hoist, then sell it when the project is over.

[SirFireWolfe]

2 hours ago, 1 Lucky Texan said:

I've read, probably here, that some folks buy a Harbor Freight hoist, then sell it when the project is over.

You know what? That's probably the way to go, I've got a Harbor Freight just down the road and used hoists are only around $30 cheaper in my local listings right now. I'll aim to get the motors swapped out this week hopefully

[Steptoe's photos]

This all looks good. The detail is what we will be needing later down the dirt track I think. I have not read any reports of the finished BRATleaf, or whether you retain and use a clutch on a flywheel between LEAF power plant and BRAT 4WD gearbox. If retained, I wonder if BRAT clutch can handle LEAF electric torque?

End weight of completed eBrat ?

[SirFireWolfe]

15 hours ago, Steptoe's photos said:

This all looks good. The detail is what we will be needing later down the dirt track I think. I have not read any reports of the finished BRATleaf, or whether you retain and use a clutch on a flywheel between LEAF power plant and BRAT 4WD gearbox. If retained, I wonder if BRAT clutch can handle LEAF electric torque?

End weight of completed eBrat ?

Well, from what I know the build log for Angus' BRAT conversion is over on the Openinverter forums. I know for sure that you don't need a clutch, since neither of us use one, instead there's a steel coupler which mates onto the output shaft of the motor and uses the spline from the clutch to mate into the transmission, so the major sticking point here would be the strength of the weld holding the clutch spline onto the coupler. As to the end weight, I can't speak to how much that one weighs, but due to the differences between the two builds that feels immaterial. Really the only thing we share between the two builds is the motor, he's using battery modules from a Tesla Model 3 whereas I'm reusing the pack I pulled from the Leaf, and I'm pretty sure he's using different control electronics to send commands to the motor. But from my own research and some guesstimation, I would say that his conversion probably weighs somewhere in the range of 2500-2600lbs, and once it's done mine should be pretty similar, since the car's base weight is slightly lighter but my battery is a bit heavier as well.

[SirFireWolfe]

Hey all, Sorry for the long time without update, but progress is being made!

The EA-81 is now out of the car, and I have almost all the parts I need for the conversion either here or on the way, with the exception of the charger and equipment for the brake booster. Next on the agenda is getting the motor coupler welded and mounts fabricated, as well as pulling the exhaust and gas tank. I'm also planning on replacing both front and rear shocks while I've got the car up on jacks. If my memory serves I've got a pair of front struts ready to throw in there somewhere in my parts pile, but that may take a week or two now that I'm taking college classes again.

My hope is to at least get this thing moving under its own power by the end of the year, which may or may not be too optimistic given the rather slow pace this project has taken so far...

[88SubGL]

Can’t wait to see this finished. Really cool project.

[SirFireWolfe]

INTERLUDE: Doing the Shocks!

While I gather up the funds for the last couple parts I need to start putting everything in the car: new shocks!

Well, not new new, at least in the front, but certainly better than the popped ones that are in the car right now.

I had the good fortune of grabbing some spare parts with Gladys when I bought her, including 2 sets of front coilovers, and since a pair of brand new rear shocks can be had for $50 off Amazon, I'm replacing all four once the rears arrive on Friday. In the meantime, I've grabbed the front ones from my parts stash. Funnily enough, the pair I grabbed are KYB GR-2s, which means that with the Excel-Gs going in the rear, all four corners are gonna be on KYB struts. I dunno I just think that's neat.

Here's the new(er) front shocks loaded up for transport to Gladys in The Imp, my GFC.

In other news, I just got back from the junkyard with a couple of parts which'll be very useful if I plan on stopping the car

A vacuum pump and reservoir, which I pulled from a Volvo, but it's the same model used in 2014+ Foresters and the Tribeca (which I was originally gonna harvest this one from but someone beat me to the one on that lot)

Also on the lot was this weird little thing:

A ZAP Xebra, a weird little 3-wheeled electric "car" from the late 2000s, with a top speed of ~40mph and a range of 20-40 miles depending on the model you got

Anyways, update over, I'll be back on Friday with a report on how the shock replacement goes!

Edited September 2, 2023 by SirFireWolfe
Grammar fixes

[SirFireWolfe]

Quick update on the car, I've gotten one of the old shocks out, only to find that the top hats which match up with the car will not fit the GR-2s I was planning on installing without drilling out the strut hole. For some reason they have a "D" shaped hole for the piston to mount to, whereas the strut has a round shaft. Everything to do with this project is taking about 4x as long as I had planned for it, but thankfully I've got all the pre-built parts for the car and all that remains is the custom stuff like the motor couple and battery box.

While I was working on the car, I pulled out the old seats... Previous owner had seat covers on them and I can see why. Thankfully I found some much nicer ones out of an '89 hatch and they'll go in once I've got the battery box situated where the backseat used to be.