83 Mondial QV - EV conversion project using Tesla LDU

Urs:
Ok, so it's just crusty. More pb blaster it is.

 

Just blasted the disc (especially around the hub), and was able to whack it off with a mallet. I haven't taken measuring calipers to the rotors yet but the driver's side felt a little thin (metal is lower than at the edges) so maybe not something I can sell off to a purist.

I don't feel any wobble in the hub so maybe my front bearings are OK. It's something I can fix in the future though.
Big brake kit + SS lines here we come.
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Yeah, I don't feel any slop in them..I may just leave them be and get the car running first

 

I started measurnig things for the custom axles.
- On one side, I'll need a 28spline 31mm diameter and 31mm long axle to slide into the Tesla LDU.
Something like this
https://driveshaftshop.com/product/tesla-rear-drive-unit-930-stub-40mm-seal-size/

- On the wheel hub side, I'm pretty sure these are 930 turbo CV joints (one of the most popular aftermarket options).
Q: Do I have this right and Ferrari actually spec'd something easily obtainable ?
https://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/threads/removing-cv-joints.252327/

Measurements seem to match up
http://www.blindchickenracing.com/How_to/CVJoints_Axles/cv_joints_101.htm

If this is true, I should be able to get the stubs w/ axles with two 930CV axles/boots in a fairly straightforward fashion. My biggest concern is getting the measurements correct.

 

I got to spend a few hours working on the Mondial this weekend.
Test fitted the rear battery box and taking approx measurements to formulate a gameplan for the brackets to hold the box to the forward brace.
I'm waiting to confirm with my box mfg that running the entire assembly upside down from their 911 kit setup won't have any detrimental issues

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CAD - cardboard aided design (loved this from Project Blinky - a Celica GT4 drivetrain into an original Austin Mini chassis)
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I started trimming/cutting brackets. Yeah, starting to feel real now but TBF, this car was never going to pass Ferrari Classiche certification anyway.
Plan is for the back tabs of my battery box to rest on studs welded to where some tabs held the brake line (I think -- its been a while). Those will be replaced anyway.
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The floor of the trunk will need to be raised slightly to allow for clearance for the Tesla LDU. The plan is to bend the floor upwards so I'll have a slightly smaller and uneven trunk floor but it will still be useful (and I can probably reuse the stock plastic cover bits and/or recarpet everything anyway).
- It was kind of ugly (I didn't have a body saw so i used a combination of an angle grinder, jig saw, and dremel) but I'll have to weld up whatever I cut anyway.
- The plan is that I cut the buttom and sides along the tape at the bottom and will press the bar upwards to allow for clearance for the LDU. I'll then fill in the gaps once the right angle is achieved on the stuff I cut.
- My buddy suspects I'll end up cutting the entire floor out first before rebuilding it. He's probably not wrong but I'll try the bending idea first even though it took more time.
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I'm going to need to make another two brackets I forgot about as I cut the original tabs on the subframe that support the rear part of the body from below SO I could mount the LDU to the subframe. No big deal.

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Here I cut the three braces holding the bottom of the trunk and ground down some of the excess bits. When I bend up the rear floor, I'll weld the shortened braces back onto the bottom piece.
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HEY KIDS, always wear eye protection
This past sunday, I was happily cutting away at my cars trunk. I had ear protection on and a mask on because I didnt' want to breathe in any of the metal bits I was creating with my angle grinder and other tools. It turns out that having my glasses on in case any disc shards flew out and "safety squints" isn't good enough: one bit of metal debris got lodged in my cornea.

The result was a teary, red bloodshot eye that looks like I went on a weekend bender. Since it wasn't getting better, I went to my optometrist they found the chunk. Luckily, it hadn't hit my pupil so theres no permanent vision damange. I ended up getting my eyeball scraped with a small vibrating brush. Wasn't terrible (the numbing drops helped) and didn't take much time but I certainly don't recommend it.

Wear a mask folks, it's simply not worth it.

 

This past weekend I capped the ends and welded another horizontal support onto the subframe.
- This will hold the tabs that will bolt onto the rear of my rear battery box.
- The plywood pieces are there to provide a little clearance between the battery box and the subframe floor. Once I have the rears mounted, I'll have two additional brackets cut and bent to bolt to the front of this "rear battery box"
- I also have to make sure there's enough clearance between the rear of the battery box and the forward most bushing bolt on the upper control arm. I ended up reversing things so the bolt is in the forward position and the bolt head is pointed towards the rear of the car.
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With a friends help and my engine hoist, I muscled the rear box onto the subframe. Starting to look intentional
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My company gave us today off so with my wife also at work and my kid at school, I could spend some quality time on the car today.

I started by fiddling with the front; this horizontal bar was kinked because some prior owner probably ran over something (the bottom bit of the spare tire well had a crack in it as well).
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Initially, I tried just using clamps to straighten it a bit. The frame rails are important but this piece seems just to add a bit of stiffening.
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Yeah, that didn't work. A friend suggested I cut it and just replace it so I did just that this morning.
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My welds aren't great but a) this piece will be coated with POR-15 anyway and b) they aren't that much worse than the ones Ferrari put on this car (no "stacks of dimes" here)
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NOTE: you'll also see at the bottom of the picture that the back half of the bracket that hold the front radiator is gone; I don't have a front radiator and those will get in the way of my front battery box.
- I did some CAD work today (the cardboard kind) to see how the front box will fit. I haven't worked it out with my friend quite yet BUT I did realize that two more of the plates riveted to the frame rails needed to go AND the battery box will sit at an angle (which will make installation tricky/interesting to work out.
- I do have a little more room for the box to sit lower once I cut the gusset with the three holes in the back (originally held the HVAC hoses, IIRC) and maybe even the forward face of the radiator bracket
- I'll tackle this further once I have the rear box fully bolted up.
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Back at the rear of the car, I started test fitting the subframe to the car.
- My subframe has the tires mounted, a transmission jack under the LDU, and a caster i liberated from some shopping cart years ago. Given the space constraints in my garage (it is the size of a 2 car garage but only has one opening), I had to use the transmission jack to lift the LDU and take weight off the two car wheels. This allowed me to "crab walk" the whole assembly sideways under the car.

I also had to cut the following brackets b/c they interfered with the rear subframe and battery assembly:
- The driver's side diagonal bracket that comes down to the exhaust (may also cut the paassenger side for symmetry but I dont need to do that today)
- Two small brackets with threaded studs on the firewall
- The tube that directs the throttle cable to the throttle body, IIRC.
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So I've been busy for the last 2 months starting with 2 weeks off taking my family to Tokyo and Taipei for my kids spring break... and then a week later taking off with my friends to race in the Mexican 1000 for a second time. THAT was a crazy adventure, 6 days racing a UTV complete with 2 rollovers on day one (one of which required us to rebuild the rear suspension of our Wildcat overnight because we broke a shock in half and bent our rear trailing arm), a run in with a rock at 50MPH after which my friend and I learned how to swap tie rods on the side of the race course b/c our chief mechanic, and finally placing 2nd in Production NA UTV class (80th overall out of 117 cars finishing with 161 4-wheeled vehicles starting).

Here's a great video we got from a videographer of me dueling with a safari 911 (until we hit this silt and we could leave them).


A more detailed writeup on this adventure including a clip of the flip when my friend drove AND an collage of FPV vids he shot during the week can be found on birdcats (an enthusiast site for my lemons car): https://forum.birdcats.com/threads/myopic-motorsports-at-the-2024-mexican-1000-our-second-race-chinomasrapido.650/

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Anyway, I'm back to my more mundane life and this EV project isn't going to finish itself (or more accurately, I'm not willing to wave cash at the project to get it fixed).
- It turns out that NOONE has big brake kits for Mondials anymore so I'm going to have to buy the brake rotors and calipers from somebody and make my own brackets.

I welded on the supporting brackets to hold the back of the rear battery box. My welding isn't great here as I haven't practiced much in the last two months (the brilliant cut and rebuild of our rear trailing arm in San Felipe was handled by this awesome mechanic named Chava we were introduced to as a magician. His welds looked like stacked dimes instead of stacked boogers).
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Worked on some Cardboard Aided Design for the side brackets to hold the rear battery box. The steel plate will be cut down from this general template.
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Unlike the rear box, my front battery box doesn't actually have any pre-threaded side holes so it's going to be trickier
- Instead, it has for rubber mounts and studs on the bottom to mount in its original ElectricGT application (911 frunk).
- I have a neighbor who is a retired professional stage hand for various concert venues here in SF. He helped me right some adequate supports for the front battery so I can lift it into the frunk for test fitment (more accurately than my previous cardboard box cut to the size of the front battery).
- Another friend let me borrow a Creality Ferret to scan the front engine bay. Man, those things are a bit fussy (we needed to put cardboard behind the metal supports before making the scan because the open space in the wheel wells and were freaking out the sensors).
- Between the ability to do test fitment and the 3D scan, I should have a decent idea about where to drill the holes in the mounting brackets and what angle the brackets will need to sit to hold the bottom of the battery box in the right position
- My plan is to use either two flat bars or rectangular tubes with two holes in it to hold the battery at the right angle.
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Here's a pic of rev 3 of my front battery box plate (my friend took my cardboard, drafted it in CAD, and then printed me a 1:1 PDF which I then glued to cardboard and test fit). We had to dial in the position and width of the gap at the bottom to minimize the amount of grinding necessary to get it to fit as closely as possible to the oval shaped subframe tube). While cardboard "ears" will easily deform, 3/16" (hopefully) shouldn't bend as much. These are good enough to order the actual brackets (and matching gussets) from sendcutsend.com for $87-ish shipped.

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My big brake kit also arrived. Here's a test fitment of my rotors which look pretty nice. One pleasant surprise is that the rear setup actually includes a mechanical ebrake mechanism built into the rear calipers. While they aren't beefy enough to use as a drift brake, they'll hold the car and save me another ~$1300+ (Wilwood's Electronic Parking Brake was my first idea). Biggest downside: I have some fitment issues with the bracketry I need to resolve with the vender/mfg. I'm hoping they just shipped me the wrong brackets. If not, I'll need to fab my own replacements. I'll probably make this a separate write-up.

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Finally, I fabricated a bracket to mount my high-voltage junction box. My friend always recommended that I hold off on cutting brackets until I'm positive that they are in the way; this advice was super useful as I ended up repurposing the fuel distribution bracket to hold the base for my HVJB.

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After the brakes, that just leaves ordering the rear axles, mounting the front battery box, oil and water radiators, and the oil circulation pump. After that, its all wiring.

 

My front brackets came from sendcutsend.com yesterday. I had to grind out the brackets a bit where they meet the subframe but they fit fairly nicely (will be able weld them easily). The big discrepency here is because my test templates were all cardboard (which is floppy) whereas my brackets are 3/16" steel (which isn't). Had a prototyped the brackets with wood (which would have been more work), I probably could have gotten a closer fit with the CAD design.
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I now need to deside whether I weld the lateral gussets on at an angle that follows the subframe (which looks better, but doesn't add much more support) or fully perpendicular to the main bracket (which would add the most rigidity against lateral movement). There are 4 brackets holding the 370LB battery box at the rear so I'm a little doubtful it will rip off... but its something I need to think about.

Q: Any opinions?

Perpendicular
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At an angle
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Oh, I also forgot to post the pics of mounting my first radiator. These are tiny but you don't need much to cool the coolant loop and the EV motor itself.
- On the passenger side there are two studs I can reuse to mount the radiator.
- After prototyping what I needed out of cardboard, I cut the first out of some scrap aluminum (it was a 1/8" PC case panel, IIRC). The result was something that was a bit too sloppy since its mounting a bracket that came with my radiator. This is the example on the left
- The version on the right was cut out of some 3/16" plate that I had in my garage. I'll clean it up a bit before sending it (and the entire subframe) out for powder coating. Or, I'll make a new one (this was pretty ad-hoc).
- FWIW, this new bracket doesn't move at all. Its hard to see but it also holds the radiator at an angle so it'll catch air coming through the strakes so from a functional standpoint, it'll work. I still have have some of the stock ductwork but I'm not sure it's really useful to direct air to the rad; if necessary, I can always use fiberglass and make my own ductwork in the future.
- The drivers side will be a little trickier as I don't seem to have the same studs I used to hold the radiator on the passenger side. I'll make something similar and either bolt the new brackets to the horizontal support or fashion some other attachment mechanism.

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This sheet came in so I transferred a template I made from cardboard to the sheet and cut the necessary holes for the AEM dash for the EV control. This sheet actually sits "behind" the tachometer gauge so I had to cut a half circle on the left edge to leave clearance for the gauge. Eventually, I'll figure out what I need to do to go from CAN bus to RPM (multiple solutions exist but I also suspect a DIY solution is possible as well)

I started cutting the panel using my small bandsaw this evening but realized that my dremel would do a better job. Having bought this carbide burr dremel attachment for fitting the brackets to the subframe (needed something small to eat away at the metal), I found these attachments made quick work of the CF sheet as well without causing it to melt and gum up from the abrasion heat (which is nice)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09F34DVPX

IMO, Carbon fiber makes everything look more ballin'
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Urs et al:
Q: How does one remove the trim pieces on the rear buttresses? Once removed, how does one recondition them?
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My friend who owns a body shop just called me and let me know he has a lull in his pipeline and asked me how soon I could get my Mondial back into rolling condition. Despite having not finished my brake upgrade or mounted both batteries yet, I figured this is as good a time as any to get the car resprayed so I reinstalled the rear subframe, reattached the steering wheel, and ordered some shorter M14x1.5 wheel bolts to install the wheels on w/o any rotors. I also removed the corner lights and the few remaining trim pieces left on the car.

This Mondial QV came with a 3.2 front bumper and I've already deleted the V8 so I'm not going to win any prizes for authenticity here.

I'm actually thinking about deleting the sunroof entirely. Mine doesn't work and if I spent the $400-500 in parts to fix it, the result still won't be terribly reliable either so deleting it altogether will also let me remove the drain lines and other suspect bits. Any dissenting opinions here?

Q: Fender shields aren't original on Mondials, right? I don't love them so after their removal, they probably aren't going back on.

I also considered deleting the side marker lights but I'm pretty sure its a US requirement to keep them.

 

What do you folks use to recondition these black buttress parts and the side strakes?
Is it paint? That seems doubtful. A plastic/rubber restoration product maybe? Does that stuff fill in any micro cracks?

I plan on keeping these pieces black while the bumpers go body colored except for the lowesr section (3.2 front isn't black but the rear is body colored.

Not sure about the lower grill from the 3.2. it's silver now but doesn't match anything else on the car except the wheels. Would probably be ok.

Would black to match the hood highlight look better?
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I'm considering whether or not to keep the horizontal bit on the front hood black. Not standard, but I like it with Rosso Corsa.

However, I'm 99% sure I'm ditching this color. I don't love it. I don't care about originality, obviously, so my plan is to do something I prefer: azzuro Hyperion.

How that looks with the horizontal black frunk, I'm less sure. A friend gave me a hot wheels model I disassembled so we'll see how that looks

 

So my car is now off to my friend's body shop.
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In getting my car setup as a roller and getting stuff ready for the body shop, here are some random lessons I learned:
- If you want to mount your wheels on on your hubs w/o rotors, I found M14 x 1.5 x 28mm shank bolts fit. I bought a set for $32.99 on Amazon and found I needed to add my 9mm spacer on the rear.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09V78Q1C4

- For the trunk weather stripping/trim, this was an exact fit
Automotive Door Weather Stripping 20Ft Car Door Rubber Edge Trim Seal Strip Gasket with Top Bulb Easy to Install for Car Bus Camper Boat RV Truck Doors and Home Applications - $19.98 from Kikerike on Amzn
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BVVMVG72

- For the engine bay trim, this was an exact fit:
KX Edge Trim Black Small, 1/8" Fits Edge, PVC Plastic Edge Trim U Shape Black Large Edge Protector (10 Feet) - $8.99 from Kaixuan on Amzn
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07PRHG81Z