Drive train and painting

A good friend of mine has been kind enough to weld the pieces of my slip yolk together (see previous posts to how these were made). A good solid weld was achieved without any distortion of the universal joint arms.


This is the slip yolk after a bit of grinding of the weld bead as it spun on the lathe, which should help to keep it balanced.


The slip yoke connected to the original prop shaft, completing the drive train.


Series wound electric motors, like the kind I plan to use in my conversion, are susceptible to over-spinning and destroying themselves if power is applied while not under load (i.e. if the accelerator is pressed while the car is in neutral). To protect the motor, I would like to have a lock-out so the motor cannot be energized when the transmission is in neutral. Here I have drilled a hole in the transmission casing to receive a spare reverse indicator switch, which I will use as a neutral indicator switch.


On the gear selector shaft, I have added a set of copper sleeves to push against the switch when in the mid position. Pieces of regular copper plumbing did just the job.


The final assembly, and it works.



In researching methods of DIY car painting, I found many reports of people having good success using a roller to apply the paint. Using a front fender as a test piece, I am applying a first coat of paint using a high density 4" roller. The paint is thinned about 15%. It looks like there are lots of bubbles here, but most disappear before the paint dries.



The trick to this method is a color sand between coats to remove imperfections, and the occasional bubble that didn't pop. This is the fender after after about 4 coats and some wet color sanding.
After another two coats, more sanding, finishing with 1500 grit paper, a buffing with rubbing compound, then polishing compound, it looks not bad.

shifter and other body work

It's been -30C outside (and in my garage) these last few weeks, so I'm mostly working on things I can do inside the house.


Finding a shift lever for a Chevette 4-speed (i.e. the transmission I am using) is a real challenge. The recent hike in the price of steel has sent a lot of these cars to the crusher. "You should have come 6 months ago" I was often told while searching for this part. My transmission supplier was able to find something close (the parts on the right), which I have to fit into the control housing on the left.

With a little bit of cutting and turning, a workable solution was obtained.

The inside of the steering gear box. As per my Yahoo Group contacts, the lubrication to use here is gear oil.

The existing seal for the pitman arm shaft would certainly not hold oil, so I renewed it.

In this North American version of a British car, the steering and foot pedals are all on the left hand side, however, for some reason the manufacturer didn't switch over the door lock to the driver door. Thus, locking and unlocking the car by key has be done on the passenger side (there's only one lock). Seeing this would not be convenient, I decided to move the lock over. By rubbing a card over the holes for the key and handle assembly, I am making a template to mark the hole locations for the other door.


Using the template, I have cut the hole for the key lock.

A pic of the lock mechanism inside the door. The only modification required was to add a copper bushing to the handle to better guide the shoot bolt.

I now have my door lock on the driver door.

While most of the car is relatively undamaged, the front fascia was a rather twisted piece of metal .

After some hammering, it got reasonably straight. The rest will have to rely on putty filler.

Making new interior door panels. The old ones were water damaged, and as I found out too late, had shrunk rather significantly such that they weren't reliable to use as templates for the new ones.

I thought I would use a stiffer material (5 ply veneer) rather than Masonite, however I didn't notice the panels need to have a slight bend at the top end, to which my panels resisted. Using a router, I cut grooves where the bend needs to be (see previous photo), and used a clamping jig to form a permanent bend.


The panels are painted, and then covered with a padded vinyl.

Adapter plate machining and transmission assembly

The adapter plate is made from a 1/2 inch thick 6061 aluminum plate, which as mentioned previously, I purchased as an offcut where the dimensions reach exactly to the edges of the bell housing. I may only need only to trim some of the corners off, which is a significant relief as cutting 1/2 plate with home tools is a slow process.

It is critical that the electric motor be concentric with the transmission shaft, therefore I thought it best to keep the plate and the transmission indexed with a pair of guide pins. This will also allow for some forgiveness on any misalignment or play in the other bolt holes to be drilled, while not affecting the overal plate alignment.

Using a punch and a centering tool (i.e. various bits of tubing) to mark the center for the holes.

Drilling the holes. You can see why some forgiveness in hole alignment is needed, as the drill does tend to wander with this kind of set-up.

Taping the holes that will receive bolts.

Checking the hole alignment. Only a couple holes needed touching up with a rat-tail file.


Cutting the hole for the motor shaft with a jig saw. Very slow going. Applying oil to the blade seemed to help.

Finally done. The hole is actually slightly undersized, as the plan is to make the hole concentric when it is enlarged, as I will only know where the exact centre is once everything is assembled.

Now to put the transmission transmission together, which hopefully will be easier than the disassembly. Because of the erroneous directions from the Chilton manual, many loose part fell out the casing before I could see where they came from, which included 16 roller bearings for the main shaft. However, in putting things toghether, there is only room for 15 pins. I'm hoping that the extra pin was just a loose one left behind in the transmission by GM.

The main shaft, counter shaft, and gear selector mechanism before slipping over the casing.

The cover installed

Here are the aluminium couplers with an elastomer spider that I will use. These are very light, and should not add too much to the rotational inertia that the synchronizers will have deal with when shifting, as this is a clutchless system. Now I wait for my motor to come before making final adjustments to the plate.

Machining the transmission input shaft and other work....

My plan to couple the electric motor to the transmission is to use a pair of Lovejoy connectors. However, the transmission has a splined shaft, whereas the couplers are made to fit on a keyed shaft. The simplest solution is to machine the input shaft to accept the coupler. To do this, I have set up my mini-lather to have a grinder in the place of the cutting tool, as the shaft is hardened steel and cannot be cut using a carbide bit..
I ground down the shaft to the next largest shaft diameter (i.e. 7/8") based on the available coupler sizes.
The machining only required removing about 0.5 mm (0.02 in.) from the main shaft, but most of the spline teeth are now gone with just the roots remaining. (The area machined appears darker here and starts midway down the shaft)
Using the grinder again, this time to cut a keyway down the length of the shaft. Here, I slide the shaft along the grinding wheel until the desired depth is reached, repeating the process after shimming up the sliding surface to get the right width of cut.
Test fitting the coupler with a length of key stock - success. Eventually, the shaft will shortened once I determine the required length, but essentially the length protruding from the coupler in this picture will be cut off.
Meanwhile, it was time to bolt the body back to the frame, so lifting it up one last time...
... and slowly lowering it, using screwdrivers to line up the bolt holes
The original master cylinder for the brakes was frame mounted and located under the driver seat. I decided to switch to a dual reservoir system, mounted on the firewall. The pedal assembly is a recycled part from a what I believe was a Honda (the car was not in a recognizable state), and the master cylinder is a new Mazda truck part.
The heater control assembly, repainted and re-labelled using rub-on decals from Lettraset.
Steering tie rods, reconditioned and fitted with new rubber boots.
A convenient feature of the tie rod ends for this car is that the bottom cap screws out, and thus are adjustable for wear.

The continuation, which pretty much brings this blog up to date ....

Here is the slip yolk from the Chevette transmission (on the left) and the U-joint cut of the original transmission's slip yolk. The plan to interface the new transmission is to put the old u-joint on the newer slip yolk.

Here is the newer slip yolk with the u-joint cut off and machined to index with the old u-joint so it stays centred.

The modified parts fitted together, and eventually will be welded.

Fitting up the transmission to design new brackets . The slip yolk is held together with duct tape for now.

The bracket that I made for mounting the back end of the transmission.


The bell housing resting on an aluminum plate that will be the adapter for the electric motor. The metal shop had an offcut that was exactly the right size. Serendipity happens.

Starting on modifying the heater box. Here, the heater core will be replaced with the workings of a electric ceramic heater.