For my next EV conversion project, I bought a 1962 Mercury Comet station wagon in need of a restoration, and a 2014 Nissan Leaf that was wrecked and totaled.
Here's the plan:
- Resolve-ev controller
- gps mechanical drive speed converter from Speedhut, to spin the speedometer cable
- battery pack in the engine bay (battery bay?) in a custom steel enclosure
- two rows of 20 modules stacked + 8 modules placed on the side
- cut the plug ports from the Leaf battery enclosure and reuse them
- motor, inverter and charger will all be in the rear.
- inverter and charger can go where the gas tank used to be
- possibly fit a small radiator and water pump back there too..?
- or just send some tubes to the front via driveshaft tunnel
- de dion axle, diy
- use the front hubs from the Leaf
- rear brakes from a 2005 Honda Accord
- keep the leaf suspension, may have to get HD leaf springs or add-a-leaf
- new steel wheels and hub caps, 15x7. The 5x4.5 bolt pattern is the same on the Leaf hubs as it is on the Comet's front spindles. (or at least it will be after I upgrade the spindles for disc brakes)
- keep it manual brakes
- keep it manual steering
- upgrades to the front end
- disc brakes, shocks, roller spring perches, strut rods, etc.
- if the steering gearbox is completely worn out then maybe I'll adapt a manual steering rack & pinion
- electric air-con aftermarket
- high-voltage heater core from the Nissan
- throttle pedal from the Nissan
- Gauges:
- speedhut gauges
- LCD display
- OBDii port
The main thing is that I'm using the Resolve-EV controller for this build. This is a cost saving measure because it will allow me to use the Leaf's BMS, Charger, Inverter, Motor and Charge Ports and they will all behave like OEM. The ability to use the Leaf's BMS may be the best part because no good aftermarket system exists, at least not for less than $1000, for the 48 battery modules in the pack.
Before I did any work to the Mercury, I had to pull out all of the parts from the Nissan Leaf. My video explains everything in detail:
With all the parts out now, I wanted to bench test them and make sure everything was working and the Resolve controller was behaving like it should.
You can watch the whole video on that here:
Once I could confirm that the Nissan motor and battery and everything was working, I was finally ready to remove the old combustion engine from the Mercury Comet, a.k.a. "de-ICE" the car. The engine was a 144 cubic inch 2.4L straight-six "tractor engine" as I called it.
And now the real fun can begin!
Jump to the next page in this series: Installing the motor, inverter, and charger