This project started in 2019 during the hype of EV and EV retrofits, and I had seen a car I absolutely adored that I thought would be a good candidate. I searched for a donor and found a very cheap but non running EV that had what appeared to be from online searches an easy to re-use motor, gearbox and controller: the peugeot partner venturi. It was basically a road legal DIY retrofit by a Venturi, using off the shelf parts. It had a dead Zebra battery, had been ran into and the guy wanted it gone fast.

I’ve loved the Fiat 126 since seeing it in Rome and Poland, and had a very passionate man show me his. The space underneath was plentiful for mounting a motor. After pulling the hardware out:

Opening up the gearbox to inspect what may need to be changed to allow reverse operation, as it is not supposed to turn backwards per the manual.

Finding the TIM600Handbook_7.2E.pdf is useful.

Mounting it this way will fail inspection. Laws have changed in Belgium over the course of the project, requiring multiple reworks. Current rules are no chassis modifications, only re-use existing bolt points, no more than 10% weight increase per axle. More details here..

The above mounting also has the downside of being reverse direction compared to what is stated in the manual. When opening, I did not identify clear issues with oil path, I’ll have to look into it again if I don’t flip it.

Getting it all laid out and wired up to HV, I got to test the motor, controller and my simplified wiring:

And a short video, it is an incredibly loud motor/motor controller. Note I was using here a much lower voltage than the motor was originally programmed for, so that may be playing into it too. these tests were ran at approximately 80v which is the highest my temporary setup could go.

GPhotos video of the motor

I purchased a Orion 2 BMS. I had originally intended on using a volvo hybrid battery (visible elsewhere on this blog), but got rid of it as the project stalled.