The instant torque is amazing. From an actually useable standpoint it's
probably the most fun I've had in any of my project cars. To best
describe it...you'll never miss a yellow light again.
I've had a number of E30s over the years. Probably half a dozen or so, so when it
was time to start looking for a daily driver it had been probably two or three
years since I had been behind the wheel of one ,so it was just kind of the
logical choice. It was my daily driver for about half a decade. Kind of got
tired of the Connecticut winters taking their toll on the car, so retired it from
daily duty. I considered doing, you know, the typical turbo route, because why not.
Then I decided I wanted to try something little bit different. I saw some guys had done
Tesla swaps on YouTube. They weren't slow, they looked like they were having fun, so
I took an opportunity to to do something new. The motor is what they call a large
drive unit of a Tesla Model S. It's basically a completely self-contained
unit and the entire thing's held in the car by only three mounts so there's no
transmission per se. There's no gears; it's just a single direct drive.
The motor itself is limited to around 16,000 rpm, and with the tire diameter that
should theoretically translate to around 125, 130 top speed, but it's a, E30
convertible, so you don't really want to spend too much time up there.
Everybody always talks about electric cars being silent. This motor kind of
makes its own sort of spaceship, Jetson-ease sort of noise especially from a
low-speed takeoff you hear it, you know it's there, but it's also quiet enough that,
you know, being in almost 30-year-old car, you hear all the creaks and rattles of
the - you hear little things that you would never notice with just the
vibration or background noise of a typical motor. To me I think the biggest
challenge in doing EV swaps now is the availability of good components. There's
a number of companies out there supporting the conversion market with
with products, but some of them are less automotive grade than others, so there's
quite a variety and range of products that are available. When it comes to battery
choices there's a few go-tos out in the market. You've got the Chevy Volt, the
Nissan Leaf and obviously the Tesla sells a complete Chevy Volt pack is only
16 kilowatt hours meaning you get about 40 to 50 miles range. This car has the
complete pack, so I've got 32 kilowatt hours of battery. A single Tesla module
retails for a thousand to twelve hundred bucks if you want a complete Tesla pack.
There's 16 modules so it gets pretty expensive pretty fast. This car probably
has 4,500 bucks worth of battery in it and at this stage in the game I'd call
that pretty affordable.
One of the things that I went into with this build was knowing how fast that
battery tech is evolving. These batteries are the hot ticket today two years from
now that's probably not gonna be the case so I made all the battery mounts to
be essentially bolt in. In the front, it bolts to the factory radiator support
and factory motor mount pads in the back. Basically a mounting plate that's
laid up into the entire space at the trunk. Should I come across a higher
performance battery, something lighter or something better suited to, you know, the
tech improvements then it's just a simple matter of swapping it out.
The car uses a standard J 1772 charging, the same as pretty much every other EV,
your plug-in hybrid, and eventually I will be implementing what they call it
ChadeMO DC fast charging. It's essentially the same as supercharging
for everything other than a Tesla. The Tesla drive is direct-drive the single
gear, so there's no need for a traditional shifter I want to keep the
analog feel of the car. If somebody looked in the car I want it to
look like an E30. I designed basically a foward-neutral-reverse switch that basically just uses
micro switches to select the gear and it's all obviously packaged under a
factory M style shift knob.
The car weighs 2,960 pounds, that is a hundred pounds lighter than stock. Weight
distribution of the car is about 60% rear bias, which might sound like a lot
but it basically mimics that of say like a Porsche 930. I did want a rear bias on
weight because with that much torque on tap
obviously on acceleration it helps on traction but under braking the motor can
regen brake hard enough to lock up the tires if you're not careful, so in going
to transition from throttle to brake it basically makes the rear brake first and
kind of settles the chassis and prevents it from getting squirrely.
In order to fund this project I sold one of my other project cars which was a
turbo LS E36 M3. That car was definitely faster, but you had to go out
with a plan in order to use the power. You have to find, you know, a deserted
section of the highway in Mexico and this car I'd say while being less... not
quite as brutal the instant torque is amazing from an actually useable
standpoint it's probably the most fun I've had and, you know, any of my project
cars. To best describe it -- you'll never miss a yellow light again.
You know all the automakers are dumping billions of dollars into EV
development and I mean, let's face it this stuff isn't going away anytime soon
the internal combustion motor is always going to be there from the the hobbyist
performance standpoint, but I think there there's probably gonna be a point in the
future where, you know, if you want a new modern driveline it's it's gonna have to
be electric. Yes really what led me to this I wanted to figure out how to have
fun with with that tech and not lose the experience of driving a, you know, a
classic analog car you know at the end of the day there's not a whole lot of
people doing this stuff. I'm hoping to get the word out and show that it's not that
hard you can -- you know -- a guy in his garage can do it with a little bit of planning.