Hi, my name is Sara and I have been a long term vintage motorcycle fan. Long ago I inherited boxes of 360 parts from my sister's college adventures and they have been kicking around in the back of my garage for years. My sweetheart Ed is an electronics whiz with a burning desire to build an electic car. I have a little restaurant in Seattle and would like a "Calamity Jane's" car to advertise and run my errands with. Long story short, Ed has bought two Subaru 360's out of Texas on Ebay, and we have a grand project in front of us. We are happy to be on board with you all!

Welcome Sara! You have the guru on your side. Make sure you document the conception of this electric 360, I would love to go green.

Ooo... you have two. Are you going to use one as parts car?

I'm not into electric cars, mainly because they're but ugly, with your el-360 you're going to change that. You should get a van too - for your bigger errands

Welcome to the forums, I'm new here myself.

Welcome! I like unique cars, Subaru 360's are it ! and EV's are the wave of the future.

Mark

Welcome aboard, Sara and Ed. This is a great place to hang out with fellow Subie people! Good luck with your electrifying adventure.

The two cars have been named Jan and Dean, and they both have a will to live. so...
Dean is pretty rough looking, but we'll try to get his sheet metal straight and the
door rot fixed.

We'll send pictures as they develop, and we'll have a whole raft of questions.
Ed's already stressed out about where to find non-leaking axle boots.

Love to all,
Sara

Sara I have axle boots if you need 2. I just replaced mine a few months ago and I bought a few extra.

Welcome!

The axle boots are easy, you can use VW ones. There will be part numbers that work in the BOR.

Axle boots! That would be excellent!
Let me know what you want

Sara, I drive my 360 van that I converted to electric almost every day! Glad to have you on board, I'm glad to help in any way.
ELECTRIC CARS ROCK!!!!!
There is a way to make the subi electric which retains the original transmission and clutch, requires the making of a shaft to replace the crankshaft. I think I have a drafting of the part I made for mine and could probably have another one made for about $200.

-Tony Rish

That is exactly what Ed has been working on, he will be very happy to hear it!

Here is a link for my photobucket page. I have pics of my wilwood master cylinder conversion there as well as what a nice heavy subaru van does to the stock brakes...
http://s196.photobucket.com/albums/aa152/tony2ltr/
My rig is a 120 volt system using 10-12V deep cycle batteries and a curtis 1221 controller. It is very peppy!

Here are some pics that will give you the idea...I'll look for the drafting...
-tONY

Tony,

Can you please explain in detail how you made the timing belt set up to connect the Crank shaft to the Electric motor ? looks like 1:1 ? Is this the same special dummy crankshaft when you had the Katana 600cc bike engine with chain drive ?

Thanks Mark

Yes, as a matter of fact it is! When do you remember that from. Were you on the old message board when I first put that together? It was about 6 years ago.
Yes, I have a dummy shaft in there it is about 3 inches longer on the end that used to be the cooling fan, otherwise it has all the same dimensions of the stock crank. The oil ports on the case are blocked off, so the main bearings (I think there are six) all ride in a bath of oil. The sprocket pulleys are from machine industry (BOSTON GEAR, BROWNING, ETC.) and so is the belt. The fan end of the shaft is actually finished to standard measure and cut for keystock to accomodate the american industry pulleys. It is slightly overdriven by one or two teeth just to get the gearing more satifactory. I am about to replace the transmission with one from Ed that has the tallest 360 gear ratio (3.73:1?) And I could still use more, so maybe a larger top (E-Motor) pulley is in order. The mounting plates are made from aluminum plate, I may make tracings of them when I take them apart to install the new trans, so I can duplicate them if anyone ever needed to. The motor plates are actually slotted for belt adjustment, which has to be done on the motor shaft centerline. Lossening the bolts and rocking the motor backwards tightens the belt. The belt is 2 inches wide, I think it is an L50 pitch (about 3/8 inch tooth) but I am going by memory now. I have a Toyota alternator mounted as a poor man's DC-DC converter to charge the 12V battery from the original generator splined-shaft pulley.
The clutch is still there, although it takes the modified coil spring style clutch and housing to hold back the torque of the electric motor. Overall, the thing is much faster than a 360 could ever think about being, with a top speed of near 70 (on the speedometer) on a long flat. Of course this is probably more like 65, which is way faster than you ever want to go in one of these things anyhow!!!!

I'm glad to answer any other questions...-Tony

Tony, I would love to do that to my van, if I can't get the motor running economically.
Three quick questions:
What amps do you figure you are getting out of the batteries? 65x10=650 amps?
The curtis 1221 goes up to 500 amps. It seems hard to get used high amp controller for cheap.
Did you fabricate the dummy shaft yourself? It doesn't sound too difficult to machine.
What do you figure your range is?

It looks really cool by the way.
thanks
Bruce

All those pics are from when it was under construction, it actually is a bit neater now, with "WARNING HIGH VOLTAGE" labels that DMV made me put on for registration.
The batteris are 85 AH, which are too small, I may go to 105 Amp hour batteries. My range is about 27 miles on the Subi Odometer with the 85 Amp hour batteries. For anyone that is interested (your Ed, Sara?), this is how you figure that out:
85 amps X 120 Volts = 10,200 watts or 10.2KW
10,200 X .57 (57% one hour discharge derate)= 5,814 Watts
5,814 / 250 watts/mile(this figure is a rough guess about energy consumption based on air and chassis drag/friction, frontal area of the van, etc. = 23.26 miles
I don't have a ampmeter, but I think the Cold cranking equiv. for those should be about 650 amps, so yeah, but I really doubt I ever pull that much from it.
I drew up the shaft, and cut the stock from an old torsion bar, but I traded welding labor for machine labor with a friend of mine. I could have done it myself probably, but It would have taken a lot longer, and I still would have had to barter for the machine time. The harderst part was the taper to match the flywheel. and reinstalling all the bearings! I did end up drilling and retapping the holes in the aluminum seal section of the fan casing for bigger bolts (you can see that in the picture)

-Tony

Tony2ltr wrote:Yes, as a matter of fact it is! When do you remember that from. Were you on the old message board when I first put that together? It was about 6 years ago.
Yes, I have a dummy shaft in there it is about 3 inches longer on the end that used to be the cooling fan, otherwise it has all the same dimensions of the stock crank. The oil ports on the case are blocked off, so the main bearings (I think there are six) all ride in a bath of oil. The sprocket pulleys are from machine industry (BOSTON GEAR, BROWNING, ETC.) and so is the belt. The fan end of the shaft is actually finished to standard measure and cut for keystock to accomodate the american industry pulleys. It is slightly overdriven by one or two teeth just to get the gearing more satifactory. I am about to replace the transmission with one from Ed that has the tallest 360 gear ratio (3.73:1?) And I could still use more, so maybe a larger top (E-Motor) pulley is in order. The mounting plates are made from aluminum plate, I may make tracings of them when I take them apart to install the new trans, so I can duplicate them if anyone ever needed to. The motor plates are actually slotted for belt adjustment, which has to be done on the motor shaft centerline. Lossening the bolts and rocking the motor backwards tightens the belt. The belt is 2 inches wide, I think it is an L50 pitch (about 3/8 inch tooth) but I am going by memory now. I have a Toyota alternator mounted as a poor man's DC-DC converter to charge the 12V battery from the original generator splined-shaft pulley.
The clutch is still there, although it takes the modified coil spring style clutch and housing to hold back the torque of the electric motor. Overall, the thing is much faster than a 360 could ever think about being, with a top speed of near 70 (on the speedometer) on a long flat. Of course this is probably more like 65, which is way faster than you ever want to go in one of these things anyhow!!!!

I'm glad to answer any other questions...-Tony

Yes, although it seems longer ago than that. 8-9 years ago?. I was the only one that believed you put a Katana 600cc streetbike engine in your van. I still don't understand why the other 360 guys refused to believe you. In fact, I still have our personal e-mails saved discussing it. That was about the time I was researching engine transplants for the "Speedracer". I thought long and hard about what you did and almost did the same. As you now know, I didn't go with a bike engine, the lack of reverse killed the idea for me. Funny how history repeats itself. Now, I'm back researching bike engines for another car of mine.

Mark

Maybe you are right, I think it was 2000-2001. I almost put a subaru justy engine and transmission in. I have large stainless steel patches in the floors and where the forward engine cover used to be. I used the same shaft I have now, but with a chain drive instead. I never got a chain guard installed, so I still have the grease spots on the inside of the roof!
The engine mounted behind the rear seat, The cover I made was right up against it, as a matter of fact, I made the new floor patch from that cover. I fashioned a shifter that had a rod that went all the way back to the katana engine so I could select a gear ratio to drive in, which was usually 6th gear. Because I drove the subi trans with the katana trans, I ended up with 24 forward gears and 6 reverse! I never hooked up the clutch, so I had to select the ratio before starting the engine. I would sit there with the engine idling, with the chain zinging along, it was the craziest thing! I also never got around to building and air box for the intakes, so the noise inside the van was intolerable. I got it up to 80 on the Berlin Turnpike one morning with a friend as a passenger. Someone pulled out in front of us and I had to hit the brakes hard, which almost put us over on our side!! Anyhow, the plugs used to load up all the time because the Katana engine always wanted to be in the 8-13,000 Rpm range. Finally, I tool it out into the street in front of my house, put the engine in third, and the subaru trans in first, and gave it hell! The front wheels came off the ground, all the engine mounts bent, the chain popped off, and I had to push it back into the garage.
Anyhow, it was much more trouble than it was worth, BUT, if I had to do it again, I would use a cruiser bike engine. As a matter of fact, I still have the CX500 engine that I modified to go into the subi. I pulled the CX transmission apart and rearranged the gears so that it had just one overdriven output gear. I never got around to putting it together, I ended up deciding that I would go diesel if I used infernal combustion. There are a lot of 6-15 HP diesel air coole engines on ebay that I could use in conjuction with the electric motor and drive belt assembly to make a diesel hybrid. ......I just don't have that kind of time anymore, and lots of other car projects to mess with.
Anyhow, Thanks for believing in some good old Yankee ingenuity! The only bummer is that I threw away the 14 gallon gas tank that i also made for the van.
If you are researching bike engines for a car you want to drive reasonably well, pick a two lunger V with lots of torque that was designed to mave a heavy bike. When I geared the K engine for the subaru, it was geared to half of the top speed of the bike, which increased it's load capability to get a twice heavier car moving. The reason it was so important to used the Subaru transmission, is that you sort of need the flywheel for driveline inertia. I would used a belt drive.
-Tony