So, the motor adventure continues. It’s been right at six months since I paid Mark Klemkosky at Matches Motors for my Warp 13 motor; little did he, I, or Netgain know at that point how much of a hassle my order would end up being. And yesterday, I got a call, the gist of which is that I’m going to have to provide part of it myself.

After weeks of going back and forth between Mark, and George at Netgain with my unusual requirements, I started dealing with Netgain more directly. Bouts of email correspondence would trail off into nothing for a month or two, then a report of more problems or protests from Netgain and/or Warfield engineers would arrive, complaining that the design won’t work for one reason or another. The original plan seemed very simple to me, but then I suppose most wrongheaded ideas probably do to those like me who aren’t knowledgeable enough to understand.

What I wanted to do was simply mill a spline on the motor shaft, and put a slip yoke on it to attach directly to a driveshaft going to the rear differential. The yoke would slip on the motor shaft as if it were a transmission output shaft, and the minimum of parts would help keep the whole setup lightweight, strong, and vibration free. Unfortunately, things are not going to be this simple. First of all, with the level of torque I’m expecting from this motor, I believe the only choice for a shaft material is either a hardened chrome-moly like 8620 or 9310, or a hard stainless which might not end up as tough but would be easier to manufacture since it wouldn’t need to be hardened. For whatever reason, this has presented a major problem for Netgain, who cannot make the shaft from anything but 1144 “Stressproof” which is a weaker low-carbon steel. It’s fine for industrial motors, but it’d have to be well over 3″ thick to handle the torque I believe this motor will produce, and all we have on the output is 1.37″.

Well, the final word arrived yesterday. I can do what I’m wanting to do, but I’m going to have to provide them with a shaft. They’ve mailed me the engineering drawings of the shaft dimensions the motor requires, and I will take the drawings to a machinist. I’ll then ship the completed shaft to them and they can then assemble the motor.

I have no idea how much it will cost, but I’m guessing it will be several hundred dollars. I hope it’s not in the 4-digit range; sadly I don’t even know if that’s a reasonable fear.

Beyond all that though, as I said to George I can’t really complain too much here. I’m not buying a normal motor, and I’m not using it in a normal conversion. I didn’t expect I’d get my motor quickly, and since I’m not really even ready for it yet, I’m not bothered too much by how long this is taking. I’m glad I didn’t put off the decision to buy the motor until I needed it.