Tuesday, August 7, 2007

Swallowing my Ego

Over the past few days, I've gone through the four stages of acceptance regarding the rather noisy vibration that the car undergoes when I rev the motor above 3500 RPM.

Denial: "My new electric car is wonderful and it doesn't really rattle above 3500 RPM."

Anger: "Why the hell does my car vibrate and rattle about 3500 RPM???!! It's not supposed to do that! Can't the Porsche folks make a good flywheel? Can't ElectroAuto make a good adapter coupling?"

Negotiation: "This would be sooooo cool to show everyone at EV awareness day and to show my friends. Maybe I can just drive around and keep the RPMs under 3000 for a week or two until I figure out the best path forward.

Acceptance: "Okay, I remember when I installed the flywheel that it didn't go on completely straight (only a few hundredths of an inch off...) and this could really screw up the electric motor bearings and the transmission. I better bite the bullet now and deal with this so I can get on the road more quickly."

I'd like to thank Mark the mechanical guy I met through an OEVA member and my co-worker Steve (retired mechanical engineer and AutoCross enthusiast) for beating some sense into me about this. I'm an electrical guy, after all. (Can't we just reboot it?)

Next up: A character building experience involving removal of the transmission and repositioning the flywheel, if it's possible.

2 comments:

Joe said...

Well at least you skipped over the whole depression stage, and went right on to acceptance.

Considering you're possibly going to 9K RPM's, I would definitely see about having the clutch balanced as well.

Any chance you might want to take a few more pictures of pulling the motor and transmission?

Joe

TimK said...

Sorry I got your comment just a wee bit too late. In my eagerness to get this thing running, I spent the past two hours lowering the motor/tranny. I'll try to describe the process in detail. Tim