Tesla swapped 2wd 1st Gen build

This is so awesome!

 

I didn’t put the charge port in the fuel cap I know I know I’m lame, it’s just I didn’t want to buy more cables, 4/0 cable isn’t cheap lol as of right now it’s just poked through the front grill

 

Smart choice - when you’re out and trying to charge, the front access is pretty convenient. You don’t have to back into a spot, dangle the cable across your hood, flip a 180 or anything when the charging cable isn’t long enough.

The front and center access on my Leaf has been good. The back passenger corner on the RAV4 prime is annoying sometimes.

 

its almost like he had a plan!

 

Ah that makes since, still that's pretty cool. Could even get fancy and make a flip up cover for it that's a toyota or tesla logo haha

 

Ok I pretty have the truck wrapped up, just waiting on EV controls to send me a new firmware update for the controller but I was able to roll the truck out and get some pictures



Here is where the charger port is


I ended up just wrapping the rear battery box lid with some golden carbon fiber vinyl, my powder Coater guy is booked up for a while


Here is the shift panel thing I made for drive neutral and reverse



a better picture of the front Rays wheels I picked up, I plan on getting these powder coated the same color as the rear Tesla wheels



I also noticed I haven’t posted much about the front engine bay AKA Frunk

Here is the Tesla battery management system called the penthouse I mounted, all high voltage goes into this from the batteries




And finally here is my power management system I put together, this has pretty much everything that has been added to the truck

 

Great job. Amazing sleeper. I am excited to see a video of the first 0-100.

 

Awesome!

 

Yeah this is what I wanna see, I wanna see this thing ZOOM. Or spin around in circles lighting the rears up lol

 

2x

 

Where did you source the Tesla parts?
Also, could you share your costs breakdown?
I’d love to build a little dune buggy (knockoff Manx) with a Tesla drivetrain.

I’d also like to upgrade my 24kWH battery in the leaf, but the only hold up is sourcing a decently priced battery. I have a CAN bus microcontroller and everything to trick the car to display things properly, just no battery lined up.

 

With ~1200 lbs of batteries over the back tires it should be interesting!

In a way is this easier than a conventional motor swap since you aren't dealing with fuel, spark, cooling and all the typical engine management that's associated with it?

 

yes and no on the easier part. Like I feel like it’s more simple. Not really that many wires compared to a full engine swap. No exhaust or driveshafts or fuel systems to deal with. But right now it seems harder, lol I’m fighting some faults with the battery controller. It’s not like I can just call up and buddy and ask his opinion.

for instance I’m having problems getting the main contactors to close in the controller

there are these little weird things call flood port sensors, they won’t let the contactors close if there is water in the battery, well I don’t have those anymore because no one told me they were important

Of course no where on the internet does it explain them

so I had to figure a way out to fool the computer to thinking they were there.

of course they weren’t just normal switches they had to be Hall effect switches. I tried taping some magnets to the sensors with no luck

So online I did find out the voltage drop across the sensors was 13.6 down to .6 but had to clue what the current was. So I just started at 1k ohm and just kept adding resistance lol



Actually ended up working out. So that was one fault out of the way

 

Dude I’m jelly! Awesome build.

 

Video on eBeam scalable axle coming to market in 2025. Hopefully will make Toyota truck EV swaps easier. Price. Unknown. This video shows a 408 kW tester. Yes 408kW.

https://youtu.be/GBWm_LZ0GYs?t=1164

 

That’s pretty cool but what people need to understand is the drivetrain isn’t the hard part of doing a EV conversion, the batteries are the hard part, unless your only looking for like a 20 mile range, that’s when it gets interesting

 

And that's the caveat to this. It seems they won't offer batteries just the axles etc. It will be interesting in what battery tech will be available to home EV converters when this comes to market. I'd definitely do this in my Land Cruiser though. Your work is pretty amazing!!

 

After this truck is done which it pretty much is just waiting on my charger to come in Tuesday I 100% have been thinking about buying another 80 series and converting it to electric, or a M57 engine haven’t decided yet

 

Oh yeh! Good idea...lol mine has been sitting with a blown timing chain guides and rear main seal. I wouldn't have those issues with an EV powertrain.

 

If I could get 20 and keep the ICE, I’d be stoked