Electric Porsche 911 conversion – Episode 1
Now growing up in the 80s there were three iconic Supercar manufacturers for me there was Ferrari uh with the tester Rosa the Lamborghini Countach poster on the wall love that and of course the iconic Porsche 911 now I know you guys love a build series and we finished the test
Rossa now so it’s time to start a new build series and what better one to choose than this gorgeous 1988 911 [Applause] um kind of in the wrong color in Ferrari red for some reason and you we finished that Ferrari tester Roa you L that series and we’re deep into the third
Ferrari test now can you believe it but that’s not what this episode’s about this episode is about this iconic Porsche 911 so let’s have a little bit of a chat about this and introduce it first so what flavor Porsche 911 do we have here because there’s lots of
Flavors of Porsche 911s over the years and people get confused even me who’s a Porsche fan but this is a gbody 911 it’s um also called sometimes the impact bumper uh 911 started life in 1973 before that was the series 1 911s and we just finished a a 9912 recently
That’s the same body shape of that series one if you like but this is a g body one and it’s got the iconic picnic table here as well or the whale tail as it’s sometimes called and this model here is a very late one it’s 1988 I
Think the this model of 9911 went to 1989 and this is a Carrera 911 so that’s what it is what are we going to do with it so the first thing we’ve done is we’ve got rid of the 3.2 L engine and the gearbox but it’s not just engine and
Gearbox we’ve taken out as you can see from the side profile before the car sitting very high up that means we’ve moved removed all of the weight not just the engine and gearbox but I know you’re riching to know what’s the weight of that then mogs well let’s find out shall
We all of this here in front of me explains why this behind me is sitting as high as a Parisa rally car because this little lot weighs quite a bit and I was quite surprised how much it did weigh now I’m going to give you a few
Minutes to get a number in your head to try to guess the total weight of what we dropped out but bear in mind it’s engine gearbox you got starter motor there the exhaust you’ve got all of the stuff here fuel tank spare wheel you’ve got things
Like the gear shifter that we don’t need gear shifter rod that has to go front to back the oil lines the all the bits and pieces that we don’t need there the oil the petrol all of that we how much now before I give you the numbers I
Just want to clarify that this is not normally how we do things here what we normally do is we corate the car when it comes in with the engine and gearbox and all the fluids in then we strip all the bits and pieces out Corner weighted
Again once it’s empty and that gives us the information we need to figure out where we can add the weight back in things like batteries and Motors obviously to get to the same weight distribution of the original car or improve it in the case of rear engine
Cars uh like 911s and Beatles for instance but I know you’re all itching to know what the numbers are so here’s the scores on the doors and I’ve written it down on a bit of paper CU I would forget otherwise so engine and gearbox and I should point out we we do weigh
The crates beforehand to take the weight of the crate out of the numbers cuz I know we’ll get picked up on that otherwise so the weight of the engine and gearbox is 292 kilos the weight of all the other stuff on that pette over there which is
The fuel tank spare wheel shifter rods oil lines etc etc is 61.5 kilos the oil that came out was 4.5 kilos and the fuel that came out was 63.75 kilos so total weight 42175 kilos so basically 420 kilos is what we got to play with to be able to
Put back onto this car when we Electrify it and let’s have a chat about that now as far as converting Porsches to Electric is concerned this is not our first rodeo I think it’s fair to say we’ve converted quite a few Porsches in the past um 944
914s um 356 behind me and quite a few Porsche 911s and the 912 I think that’s all is that all have I missed any no the only one we haven’t done is the oh one of the V8 in the front 9928 928 yeah I’d really like to do a 928 anybody out
There really like to do a 928 anyway so 911s this is definitely not our first 911 we’ve done a few of these already but just to set up the scene as to what the plan is what we’re going to do here is front battery pack rear battery pack
Motor in the rear obviously 60 kwh battery pack total it’s going to have CCS on it as well and before we get into you know episode two where we’re going to actually start getting into things I just want to set you up with a you know
Or explain if you like some of the challenges that we have to overcome when we’re doing cars like 911s Tada you love doing that don’t you I do love doing that scene right so what we got going on in front well petrol tank and spare wheel
That’s come out has created a hole cuz I’m standing on the floor at the moment so what’s going to go in here is the front battery pack and that’s pretty much it really I think the 12vt batteries got to go in obviously um DC todc converter’s got to go in the front
Which is converts the 400 volts down to the 12 volts to charge up that battery but that’s pretty much it front battery pack 12vt uh battery and the DC todc converter and over there we’re going to have the CCS charging plug as well so
The rest of it is going to happen at the back right in this area here obviously we’re going to have the rear Tesla Drive Unit we can either put the large Tesla Drive Unit or the small Tesla Drive Unit in our 9911 kits and this one’s going to
Have the small which is still plenty of power for a car like this and then around about this area here we’re going to have the rear battery pack and all that’s going to sit on a cradle it’s just going to bolt in to the engine mounts here and the transmission mounts
Here all our kits there’s no cutting no welding no holes to be drilled it all just bolts in to the standard mounts if you like and if you want to see a little bit more detail on that click on the link above because we did an episode on
The Porsche 9912 conversion kit which is very similar to this apart from the fact that the 9912 has two less cylinders so the engine mounts a little bit further forward cuz the engine is shorter um so as well in this area we’re going to have
The heater cuz on a 911 which is air cooled the heat in the cabin comes from the engine so that big fan that normally sits here blows that air over the cylinders and the heads it gets warmed up and then it goes through these pipes here into the cabin so we’re going to
Have an electric heater in this area as well throwing the heat into the cabin and then just above my head here there’s a load of holes which you’re going to reuse which is going to be for things like the coolant uh battery coolant for instance um the high voltage cables the
Low voltage cables and anything else we’re going to need they’re going to go through there so that’s it in this area so interior wise it’s going to pretty much look the same post conversion as it is now apart from the instrumentation is going to slightly change some more EV orientated
Information cuz I don’t think we’re going to need oil pressure and oil temperature and things like that but apart from that inside the other thing that’s also worth pointing out is we always have to overcome a challenge of how we’re going to get the cables and
The ca wiring and also the coolant lines from a front battery pack to a rear or the other way around depending where the radiators are and where the motors are and how we do it in the 911 is we repurpose this Central spine here where things like the clutch cable and the
Accelerator cable and shifter rods and stuff used to uh be situated in there but they’re not in there anymore so we’re going to reuse that to run the cables but it’s not just as simple as poke the cables through and you know leave them running in there you’ve got
To secure the cables and also pay particular attention to when they come through the bulkhead using those existing holes there you need to use things like compression glands or a 3D printed part that we use here to hold those cables securely in place so they don’t
Chafe so there we go that’s the starting point for this build we managed to drop off 420 kilos in fact I just had a message while we’ve been filming that our Scandinavian Partners Tom has managed to get 460 kilos off their 9911 that they’re doing over there uh but I
Think he’s cheating a little bit cuz that’s a 930 it’s a turbo so there’s a lot more gubbins if you like that they’re taking off that car but a very nice car it is too and they’re going to be using our conversion kit as well so
Go and check out their Channel as well but don’t forget to like And subscribe to our Channel if you want to follow this build and this journey of the 9/11 getting converted to Electric but question to you guys out there what Porsche would you like to see converted
To Electric would you prefer a pors 35 like we got over there or are you a 9/11 guy and if it’s a 911 guy what era of 9/11 or are you more the moderns well say modern still quite classic but those front engine cars like the 924 the 944
Or that 928 let us know in the comments below which Porsche would you like to see electrified and on that note hope you like this episode and we’ll see you on the next One
It’s time to start a new electric conversion build series for you all to follow. Hot on the tracks of the successful Ferrari Testarossa series we’re kicking off a new build series. This time it’s another 80s icon – the Porsche 911.
Make sure you like and subscribe as you won’t want to miss this one, as we transform a Porsche 911 into a Tesla powered supercar for the 21st century.
