An NA1 by any other name... would not be a miata.
#25
I thought about electrics as well...
Where, oh where are you going to put the battery?
Not a bunch of room in a NSX.
This motor is what I'd want
Koenigsegg's Tiny Electric Motor Makes 335 HP and 443 LB-FT of Torque (roadandtrack.com)
The "terrier" version makes 800+ lb/ft and it's lighter than the Telsa unit.
Telsa stuff is currently available at reasonable prices however.
One of my acquaintances is putting one in a MR2.
Anthony has perfected a killer way to make large composite parts without making hugely expensive tooling. I met him out at MSR at the national MR2 meet.
His street car (normal 3gtse) was exquisite. His carbon fiber work is world class.
He might be a good source for Telsa info and he's a great guy to talk with.
His website is
XVRacing – By Afragola Design
Where, oh where are you going to put the battery?
Not a bunch of room in a NSX.
This motor is what I'd want
Koenigsegg's Tiny Electric Motor Makes 335 HP and 443 LB-FT of Torque (roadandtrack.com)
The "terrier" version makes 800+ lb/ft and it's lighter than the Telsa unit.
Telsa stuff is currently available at reasonable prices however.
One of my acquaintances is putting one in a MR2.
Anthony has perfected a killer way to make large composite parts without making hugely expensive tooling. I met him out at MSR at the national MR2 meet.
His street car (normal 3gtse) was exquisite. His carbon fiber work is world class.
He might be a good source for Telsa info and he's a great guy to talk with.
His website is
XVRacing – By Afragola Design
#26
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Neat! Maybe I will get to see that thing in the new EV class one of these days. There was a VW vanogan with a Tesla swap a while back. I can't remember the time but it was definitely quick.
#27
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lol, you and all the Honda fanbois...
Fuel tank is removed and I plan on scanning it to see how much battery I can get in there...
The Tesla motor is much smaller than the c30, but I'm hoping to keep the motor visible from the rear window. We'll see if that's possible.
You and me both, but I'm not even sure the Koenigsegg motor is available at all. Also the $$$ is likely to be absurd and while I am muking about with an NSX, there is still a budget...
Very cool. Following him now, thanks for sharing.
I plan on brining it up for funsies once it's running Likely have to trailer it up for range/etc.
The Tesla motor is much smaller than the c30, but I'm hoping to keep the motor visible from the rear window. We'll see if that's possible.
This motor is what I'd want
Koenigsegg's Tiny Electric Motor Makes 335 HP and 443 LB-FT of Torque (roadandtrack.com)
The "terrier" version makes 800+ lb/ft and it's lighter than the Telsa unit.
Telsa stuff is currently available at reasonable prices however.
Koenigsegg's Tiny Electric Motor Makes 335 HP and 443 LB-FT of Torque (roadandtrack.com)
The "terrier" version makes 800+ lb/ft and it's lighter than the Telsa unit.
Telsa stuff is currently available at reasonable prices however.
One of my acquaintances is putting one in a MR2.
MR2 Tesla Swap Series Part 4: Setting the motor position and axle angles - YouTube
MR2 Tesla Swap Series Part 4: Setting the motor position and axle angles - YouTube
#28
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Open heart surgery
I popped the motor up on the bench and pulled off the inverter cover.
East coast life is hard on everything it seems. The motor came from NY.
Fortunately it looks really good inside. I was afraid that it might be a ruined motor as I've seen water pour out of the cases when opened in some people videos (flood recovery cars).
In order to fit this motor in the NSX it needs to run with the inverter in front of the diff, which means it needs to spin backwards. The motor is perfect capable of doing this (aside from the fluid pump, more on that in a future post), but the controls need to be convinced that this is okay. A lot of the aftermarket controllers for swapping these motors in are just spoofing the signals from the Tesla to the inverter, but none of these vendors would confirm for me that their solutions will work at full power in reverse (apparently there is some SW limit in the Tesla FW for reverse speed).
This means I need to go with one of the solutions that replaces the inverter control board. At this point that means an AEM VCU2000(and LDU control board) or an OpenInverter control board. AEM didn't seem interested in giving me the time of day, let alone answering questions about running in reverse, so I ordered the OpenInverter board. This board is open source and community supported, which has major up and downsides... hoping it doesn't bite me.
This is the Tesla Inverter control board:
and here it is removed and next to the OpenInverter board. It came populated with everything but the connectors. Those fine pitch pins were not the most fun to solder on...
And here is the control board installed on the inverter:
I need to build a test harness to make sure everything works on the bench, but I did power it up (see the red LEDs in the pic above) and confirmed that the interface comes up and it is reading out reasonable temp values. The interface is a web page and @aidandj has already suggested I should make it work with tunerstudio, lol
East coast life is hard on everything it seems. The motor came from NY.
Fortunately it looks really good inside. I was afraid that it might be a ruined motor as I've seen water pour out of the cases when opened in some people videos (flood recovery cars).
In order to fit this motor in the NSX it needs to run with the inverter in front of the diff, which means it needs to spin backwards. The motor is perfect capable of doing this (aside from the fluid pump, more on that in a future post), but the controls need to be convinced that this is okay. A lot of the aftermarket controllers for swapping these motors in are just spoofing the signals from the Tesla to the inverter, but none of these vendors would confirm for me that their solutions will work at full power in reverse (apparently there is some SW limit in the Tesla FW for reverse speed).
This means I need to go with one of the solutions that replaces the inverter control board. At this point that means an AEM VCU2000(and LDU control board) or an OpenInverter control board. AEM didn't seem interested in giving me the time of day, let alone answering questions about running in reverse, so I ordered the OpenInverter board. This board is open source and community supported, which has major up and downsides... hoping it doesn't bite me.
This is the Tesla Inverter control board:
and here it is removed and next to the OpenInverter board. It came populated with everything but the connectors. Those fine pitch pins were not the most fun to solder on...
And here is the control board installed on the inverter:
I need to build a test harness to make sure everything works on the bench, but I did power it up (see the red LEDs in the pic above) and confirmed that the interface comes up and it is reading out reasonable temp values. The interface is a web page and @aidandj has already suggested I should make it work with tunerstudio, lol
#29
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I did chat with some of the Tesla guys. There used to be a couple of solar charging trailers there but they are gone. However there is some sort of RV charging port that can be accessed if you talk to some of the staff. I have no idea how long it takes with a charging port like this but it might be an option for you without trailering.
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