New Motor Mount

It's been quite a while since an update!  whoops...  I've done lots of little things, one pretty big fix (new upper motor mount) and have been driving the car most every day for the last few months.  Here's the big fix, I replaced the upper motor side mount with a stock Saturn mount and a new steel bracket (made of a few pieces of welded up angle iron) which has really made the motor more solid.  I was, and still am having an issue with excess driveline backlash, this new mount really helped.  I've still got too much motor/driveline movement going on though.  I'm not sure if it's in the mounts or the suspension, but I have a suspicion it's mostly motor mounting.  Anyway, quite drivable, but it can be lurchy if I'm not careful to preload the driveline before pulling away from a stop.

here's the new mount, needs paint...

here's a view with the component tray down in position,

I had to do a little trimming, and moved the contoller over about 2 inches (it's not installed in this photo).  Fortunately there was enough room to do it without major changes, just had to shift over some wiring and the heater controls box.

While I was doing this, I also upgraded the other mounts with polyurethane inserts to replace the stock rubber.  One was pretty torn up, the weak motor side mount was putting a lot of extra strain on the other mounts.  here's the before picture of the torn up insert,

and the after, with the new insert,

much more solid now.

With the new more solid mounts, I also cranked up my controller to 750a to the motor.  Which caused the clutch to slip...  I've turned it back down to 650a which seems ok for now, at some point when I have the motor out again I'd like to put in a racing clutch so I can use the full power of my controller.  But for now I'm set at 500amps battery side, and 650amps motor side and it drives very well.  No problems keeping up with cars on the road.  And it's very quick off the line, easily spins the wheels in 2nd gear from a standstill.

Only other big fix was a busted shifter cable bushing.  Not EV related, just 20 year old car related. :-)  Fortunately it was an easy fix, I temporarily fixed it with zip ties and ordered a new cable bushing from ebay and had it fixed in a few days.

Also, I have still not done anything about the weak battery cells.  I just left them all as they are, and it's doing OK.  I'm definitely getting more voltage sag (and thus lower efficiency) than I ought to have, but there's still plenty of range for my needs.  I have a reliable 45 mile range which is plenty for me on a daily basis.  I have some ideas of how to do some testing, but for now I'm just driving it.  I do think I'll buy a pair of extra cells here soon (I think at some point I'm going to piggyback a few cells, and add 2 new ones to the system) since the 130ah cells I'm using have been discontinued and I feel like I ought to buy them now before I can't get any more!

That's all for now, fwiw I have now driven about 5000 all electric miles with this car, and am driving my gasoline powered van 1-2 times a month when my range (or carrying capacity) needs exceed those of the electric Saturn.