Loved by enthusiasts everywhere, the Pontiac Fiero is a great little American car. It is also one of the most inexpensive and practical electric car conversions you can find. The right amount of work and determination can allow you to create an Electric Vehicle (EV) with up to a sixty-five mile range at highway speeds with a driving speed of fifty-five to sixty miles per hour. This kind of EV can achieve a top speed of more than eighty-five miles per hour. You can even commute in this great electric vehicle to work, groceries shopping or just plain driving on a lazy Sunday.
If you were to send a Pontiac Fiero to be retrofitted into an electric car by a professional workshop, prepare to invest upwards of $4000. An alternative is to do the conversion yourself at your home garage. How do you retrofit a Fiero into an EV? This article will provide some useful information on the conversion process.
Step one of the conversions is removing all internal combustion engine components of the Pontiac Fiero and leaving all wiring for the chassis in place. Be sure to mark this wiring carefully. Keep the original clutch and flywheel, as well as the transmission. This produces a functional car chassis that works other than the fact that the engine and all related systems are missing. Then, clean the chassis to remove all the old dirt and grease from the old engine. They won’t be coming back, after all.
Most conversions use a manual transmission vehicle for its simplicity. With the internal combustion engine and related components gone, it’s a simple matter to bolt an electric motor in its place. One conversion used a nine inch advanced DC series wound motor, which is bolted to the flywheel. The original four speed transmission is left in place. To remove drag on the Fiero, the starter ring is bolted to the flywheel. It is important to balance the whole assembly before you put it back together. The conversion process literally replaces every part that has fluid running through it such as the gas tank, fuel lines and radiator with electrical wires and connectors.