I’m finally making some progress on the adapter plate. I have machined a mockup out of MDF. Now I have to verify the pattern before I start machining it out of aluminum. Things have been going kind of slow since I only get down to the shop once a week and I’ve been spending quite a bit of time getting the mill running well.
I drew up a design for the adapter plate in SolidWorks. I think it is pretty much done. I will have to verify the thickness before I cut it out. I will put the coupler on the motor and measure how much it is sticking out from the face of the motor. I may make the tapered hole in the back of the coupler a little deeper to allow the bushing to seat in a little further to get the whole assembly a 1/4″ or so shorter.
This was my first foray into using SolidWorks and I have to say that it’s a pleasure to use. If only it was a Mac OS application and not so ridiculously expensive.
In the past I have used Rhino for things like but it makes it much more difficult to go back and change things. With this drawing could modify things like the thickness of the ribs by just changing one number.
I finally decided that the way to go was to make a coupler that accepts a QD bushing and bolts to the back of the flywheel.
I drew the part up a couple of times in Rhino until I got it the way I wanted and then decided to draw it up in the emachineshop.com software to see how much it would cost to have them fabricate it.
Now that the transmission modifications are mostly sorted out I have to get on to figuring out how to couple the motor to the transmission.
In my old setup, there was a coupler attached with set screws and a key to the motor shaft. This seems to have been ok but the general consensus seems to be that this will fail under higher power setups. Since I plan to hopefully make my car a little more peppy, this is a little of a worry so I am hoping to switch to a more durable taperlock setup.
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