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I've been working on several improvement projects on both the interior and exterior, so I thought I'd provide some photos. Here's the exterior.
It's not a great photo, but you can see the fog light kit installed. I haven't wired it up yet, but it looks nice and fills up the grille area that was blank before.
I've still got a lot of work to do on the interior, but here's a couple shots:
In the second photo you can see the updated dash area. I've replaced the old dash pad (which seemed to be some aftermarket cover) with a Ford tooling repro. I've also installed a new cluster bezel and switches (except for the heater switches, which at first I thought was ok, but now next to the new switches, it looks pretty tired).
If you look closely at the ignition switch you'll see my latest restomod upgrade: a push-to-start button. I did mostly for security - it includes a basic alarm and makes the car a bit harder to hot wire (won't start without the RFID chip nearby) - but also for convenience (and, in my opinion, looks pretty cool)!
One last pic, showing off the only exterior badge that would tell an onlooker that there's something unusual under the hood:
Last edited by sailfish11; Nov 19, 2014 at 08:13 AM.
I'm having some trouble with my VDO Speedo. It's driven off the T5 sender and generally works. The strange thing is it goes bonkers when I turn on the headlights. Sometimes it works, but usually it bounces around or just goes completely dead.
I'm guessing it's a bad ground wire or interference from other wires. I'll try to track that down this weekend, but I wanted to see if anyone else has had trouble with electronic speedos and could maybe help me narrow down the possible cause.
Well, after six years of electric driving, I'm going to pull everything out and start over.
The car worked as a daily driver. I drove it nearly every day, but it never performed as well as I'd hoped.
The culprits were both the motor and the batteries. The motor came off a bus, so I thought it would move a little Mustang pretty well. Although it had decent torque (200 ft lbs), it only had about 80 HP. I guess that's why you never see a bus drag racing....
The batteries were also a source of weakness. The pack voltage dropped significantly under heavy load (like when trying to accelerate) and that further limited my available HP. The batteries were supposed to last about 10 years, but quality control wasn't great on these old Chinese cells (it's gotten better) and the pack is only as strong as its weakest cell. As it got near the end of its lifespan, cells were beginning to drop like flies.
So I'm pulling all the old components out and putting new ones in. Electric car technology has improved dramatically since 2008, when I first put the EStang together, so I should see a big improvement in performance.
The new motor will be a UQM PowerPhase 100. It will give me about 10% more torque, but also about 130 HP. Not as great as a 289, but respectable.
The new batteries will be from a 2015 Tesla Model S. They're smaller, lighter, and way more powerful than my old ones. They should bring my range up to around 100 miles (up from about 35 that I was getting from my old pack).
I'm also getting rid of my old T5 tranny. I was only using 1 or 2 gears, so I was carrying around a lot of unnecessary (rotational) weight. I'm still considering what to use instead; maybe a Powerglide, or perhaps an old 3-speed. Talking to some transmission experts to see what would work best. I could forego the tranny altogether and do a direct drive. An electric motor could handle that, but having a couple gears will improve acceleration and top speed.
The car is at the paint shop now, getting the trunk and engine bay painted. Then it'll be about three months to get all the new gear put in.
More Updates/Pics
Your Dropbox photos aren't leading due to it being locked though.. Great project!
