After a ten month pause, I have finally started to tackle the conversion again and decided to attempt a trial fit of the transaxle.
The pause has been partly poor mental health, winter weather, parents using my working space to store their mobility scooters, and needing to earn money with a few more regular part time jobs taking up most of the day times.
However, I know that I can’t let this project lapse and also that there is help if I ask for it on the Open Inverter forum.
The first stage of this next part is to do a trial install of the Prius transaxle and see where it needs to fit. I can then work out temporary, and then permanent, mounting points for it.
The first stage was to check where the original transmission mounted and work out where the drive flanges would be.
I refitted the transmission mount torque bar underneath the diff. This has a known position to bolt onto in the engine bay near the drive shaft flanges. So notes made of fore/aft and vertical positions of the flanges.
It was a complete waste of time though!
I craned the Prius transaxle into position and…
Well, I need more space. Here the transaxle is about 25mm from the inner wing, but touching the ABS pump! It still needed to move another 40-50mm to the nearside to line up with the driveshaft flange. That puts it inside the inner wing metal work! Oh poo!
But then I had an idea! There is no petrol engine being attached to the Prius transaxle so it doesn’t need to be on the nearside of the engine bay.
I swapped the driveshafts over, and the transaxle can go more or less central!
I did a test and it will go in there but I need to swap to the drive shafts that Damien sent in the package. The CV joints are different and the shafts are quite a bit shorter to allow for a wider diff flange spacing.
No photo of that bit as I had to put everything away again and go to work!