Got back into it this afternoon and removed the entire exhaust system, battery, radiator and disconnected most of the engine wiring and the air intake.

It was hard going at first with lots of rusted nuts in hard to reach places. I then decided to take out all of the easy stuff first and the extra room it gave me let me easily undo the difficult nuts and bolts. The auto gearbox has an oil cooler built into the bottom section of the radiator, so I will have to get an aftermarket oil cooler to fit in it's place.

The workshop manual arrived this week and so I started the dismantling phase this afternoon. I was dying to get started early but family duties took precedence in the morning.

I drained the fuel tank by removing the fuel pump and syphoning the petrol out, then removed the fuel tank and all of the fuel lines. Next to go was the fuel filter and the carbon canister. This is really a dangerous operation as petrol keeps spurting out of the lines as you remove each part. I made sure I had a couple of fire extinguishers nearby ready to go and cleaned up each spill as it happened.

The exhaust system is next so I started off by giving each nut a good spray of CRC to try to free up the rust. It worked on the catalytic converter nuts but not the rear join. So tomorrow I will use a grinder to cut those off.

Well here goes nothing

The conversion of a 1998 Mazda 121 automatic hatchback to a plug in electric vehicle has officially started.

I bought the donor vehicle last weekend had it weighed, measured the ground clearance on each wheel and put her up on stands so I can start work removing all of the bad stuff. Engine, fuel tank etc.

I have ordered the workshop manual so I will wait till it arrives before proceeding. It still has a nearly full fuel tank so 1st thing to do is to syphon it out before removing the tank. I have to be carefull here as it would be very embarassing to set the car on fire under my wooden house. It turns out I have to lift the rear seat, remove an inspection plate, remove the fuel pump connector, start the car and wait till the engine stops to release the pressure in the tank. I can then remove the fuel pump from the tank and siphon the fuel out. This is going to have to wait for the weekend. What happened to the good old days when you could just bung a bit of garden hose down the filler pipe, a quick suck, lots of choking and out comes the fuel.

The plan for the car so far is

Netgain Impulse 9 DC motor - on order

45 off Thundersky 90 AH Liffepo4 batteries

everything else is still flexible