openinverter forum

Hello all! I'll post my build thread here, so people can follow along. I bought this car about a year ago, for the purpose of converting it to an EV, and I've been making slow progress on it ever since. I'll split this into a few posts, hopefully I catch up pretty quick here. My build goals are not really quick and dirty, more like try to engineer stuff more than necessary...

Here's the car, it's a 1949 Cadillac 60 Special. It was "running and driving" when I bought it, at least good enough to pull it out of the shop and line it up with the tow truck! Pretty solid, no rust, and complete as far as trim is concerned, so I think it's a good overall start to the project. It also has a decent chassis, which is part of the reason I chose this model, there's plenty of room for activities underneath.

One of the first steps was to 3D scan the underside for a first check to see what kind of room I have under there, so that I know what I could use for batteries/motors.
My goal here is to put the batteries where the chassis goes, between the wheels, like in a modern EV for weight distribution.

Right around August of last year, I purchased the donor car for the swap. I bought a 2019 Tesla Model 3 Long Range AWD from Copart. I was hoping it might have the 980 motor, but I didn't luck out, I have the 990. Either way, the plan is to use the entire battery pack and both motors for the swap.
Here's what the car looked like the day I got it: I spent the rest of last year basically tearing down the Tesla and parting it out. It's been surprisingly good, apparently Tesla parts are in high demand!
Here's what the car looked like at the end of 2022: