In reply to wvumtnbkr :
Apparently a stock Leaf could do 90, so I think the DMC should still be able to as well (if not a bit faster, since I'm pretty certain the DMC has larger wheels).
Pretty much any rotary is out because of the high revs not being something that the stock transaxle can take...
Ran across a DeLorean with a Bolt powertrain swapped in:
Ashyukun (Robert) said:In reply to wvumtnbkr :
Apparently a stock Leaf could do 90, so I think the DMC should still be able to as well (if not a bit faster, since I'm pretty certain the DMC has larger wheels).
Pretty much any rotary is out because of the high revs not being something that the stock transaxle can take...
I never thought about transaxles/transmissions not being able to take high revs -- I thought it was all about the torque.
GCrites said:Ashyukun (Robert) said:In reply to wvumtnbkr :
Apparently a stock Leaf could do 90, so I think the DMC should still be able to as well (if not a bit faster, since I'm pretty certain the DMC has larger wheels).
Pretty much any rotary is out because of the high revs not being something that the stock transaxle can take...
I never thought about transaxles/transmissions not being able to take high revs -- I thought it was all about the torque.
It's possible that it could take it- but the stock transmission was never the strongest and the improvements are pretty much focussed on handling torque. And the rotaries can get up to twice the RPMs of the PRV's redline, so it would be kind of rolling the dice.
I'm leaning pretty heavily toward the electric option at this point though, so the (stock) transaxle may be completely out of the picture anyway.
Needs a sticker on the back that says "Powered by 1.21 gigawatts"
There was an electric DMC at SEMA about three years ago. It was previous-gen tech. I've seen one with an Audi V8 stuffed in the rear as well. And holy cow, googling "delorean engine swap" says that there have been a lot of variations. Everyone loves the car, nobody loves the engine.
Keith Tanner said:There was an electric DMC at SEMA about three years ago. It was previous-gen tech. I've seen one with an Audi V8 stuffed in the rear as well. And holy cow, googling "delorean engine swap" says that there have been a lot of variations. Everyone loves the car, nobody loves the engine.
Yeah- the PRV was a last-minute replacement for the original rotary that DMC had contracted with a company in Europe to develop but that they never managed to get to work properly (and they apparently didn't want to/weren't able to license engines from Mazda). Worse, they used the K-Jetronic mechanically fuel injected version of the engine, which was not only underpowered but also a bit of a pain to maintain and relatively short-lived such that before long pretty much nobody was trained in maintaining them.
Long story short (too late!), pretty much any modern engine (defined as 'having been designed from about the time the DMC was built) puts out more power and is easier to maintain. I simplified mine considerably by ditching the K-Jet in favor of a custom carburated manifold (the PRV was unsurprisingly originally built to run a carb), but that did little to improve the power. So, many people will swap in other engines- I've seen things from turbo 4's to LS's swapped in, and of course an increasing variety of electric conversions (I actually saw one at the first DeLorean Car Show I went to, here in Lexington 13 years ago, that IIRC used a big DC motor bolted to the stock transaxle and a berk-ton of 12V car batteries to power it).
So.... it's been nearly 3 years since I've posted anything about actually turning an actual wrench on the DMC- but thankfully that changed this last weekend. Partially out of frustration that I'd not gotten anything done in such a long time and partially out of the desire to eek a bit more usable space out of the garage to stage things for the upcoming annual yard sale for The Dancer's non-profit, I intended to get started on pulling the rear suspension so the stripped frame would be a bit wider. But... in looking at things, I realized that it would make more sense to pull the engine first so I could get to the transaxle and driveshafts more easily. So I set about doing that.
The first day I worked on it, it was raining on and off so I had a problem- The Bat really wanted to be outside since I was, but she couldn't just lay out on her blanket in the yard because of the rain and didn't want to be all the way on the deck. So I dragged her yard blanket (an old moving blanket) just inside the garage door where it was dry- and to my great delight (The Dog was not a shop dog at all- he wasn't nearly as fond of being outside as she is) she happily plopped down on the blanket to chew on a stick.
First up was pulling the belts, alternator, starter, and the carb/intake manifold. This went pretty smoothly since most of the bolts involved were going into the block and were stainless.
Removed carb/intake manifold assembly. This has been one of the more unique features of my DMC compared to a stock one- a stock DMC's PRV has a K-Jet mechanical fuel injection system, which when kept maintained does work well. But if it gets out of whack (which can happen easily) it can be a pain to fix and so few engines ever used it before electronic fuel injection became the norm that I decided it wasn't worth the cost or hassle and bought the carb manifold from a guy who made a short run of them.
Pulled the exhaust manifolds and had to wrestle with the motor mounts (to not pull the transaxle at the same time you have to unbolt the mounts from the frame and not just the engine from the mounts since it has to slide back off the pins on the bell housing- thankfully when I put in the new mounts I also used stainless bolts so they came out easily, it just took a while since there's very little room to rotate a wrench on them), but got the engine free and the hoist attached.
Engine free and out of the engine bay. The very back crossmember on the frame will be getting cut out eventually and replaced, likely with an aluminum channel that will be bolted to the frame. This will make access back there a lot easier (not that it will be as much of an issue if, as I plan, I go with the electric conversion).
Engine finally down on the cart. Took a bit of creativity to get it to sit solidly on it since the cart is built for a Chevy V8, but it works. It's now strapped down securely and tucked away under the body for the moment- I haven't decided exactly what I'm going to do with it yet, but for now it is out of the way.
I'm a bit town on the next step. I'm leaning toward pulling the transaxle next, since doing so will give me the chance to see just how much custom work is going to be needed to fit the Leaf drivetrain and connect it up to the DMC's axles. I've been trying to find info on how the DMC that was converted to use a Lead drivetrain did it, but so far haven't gotten an answer. I'm not sure whether custom axles will be necessary, or if it's possible to modify the Leaf axle connections to mate up. It looks like the DMC's axles go further inboard than the Leaf's did, but I've not directly measured that yet.
But- at least it's moving forward (the project, the car is obviously still not going to move for quite a while). Hopefully I can keep things moving. I really want to get the frame stripped down, the rust repaired and any mods necessary for the conversion done, and get figured out what exaclty I'm going to do in the way of a rust protection on it going forward nailed down before this next winter.
Glad to see some progress!
So if one is to perform an engine swap it makes sense to do it in an iconic vehicle preferable one with a crappy motor. This is a good idea. How about a C8 drivetrain, sure to be plenty of wrecked ones soon.
In reply to akylekoz :
That would be an interesting (and probably easier than some, given the drive setup) option, but I'm sure that it will be quite a while before even a wrecked C8 is remotely affordable and the C8's engine is way more engine than the DMC needs. 500+ HP is just too much power for the a car that isn't going to be on the track at all, and would likely require considerable reworking of the suspension to be able to keep control of it.
Glad to see this back on page 1!
There HAVE been a bunch of interesting engine changes to DeLoreans, the one I liked was a turbo'd VR6, fit the engine compartment with plenty of room to spare and made enough HP to be really fun but not overpower the chassis - I think it was lighter overall too.
Good luck with your project, I think it's even more ambitious than my Ford Ecoboost ST into a Mini project!
Have the LS ready to go back in? lol!
It took a while to find this picture, but I guarantee it will be inspirational - perhaps in a "no no no never never ever" sort of way?
Saw this very rare gem at the 2007 Lotus Owner's Group convention in Aspen, Colorado. (At least one other GRMer was there!) Don't know much about the car but it sure looked immaculately done.
(Yes, that really is a Lotus Esprit V-8 Twin Turbo in a Delorean.)
I'm really glad to see an update on this.
There's an older couple that owns a super clean DeLorean somewhere in my area. I see them driving around sometimes in the summer and I'm always surprised how small it is. Or rather, I guess I'm surprised at how big every other car has become in the last few years.
I'm hoping I run into them someplace when they're parked so I can tell them how nice their car is. They've really kept it 100% mint.
In reply to BoulderG :
That's a really cool swap.
Also, AWESOME license plate 
Awww yiss!!!!
In reply to BoulderG :
That is a pretty sweet swap. The engine bay looks pretty stock besides the engine- the overflow tank is actually the same one that I have (or I suppose, had, since it won't be going back in), and the bulkhead connector cover (front right) is stock.
I've seen a pretty wide range of swaps, from VTECs to the previously-mentioned old-school electric to the LS swap (and that's just the engine swaps- the DMC Monster Truck and in-progress-and-I-believe-never-finished DMC Limo were at the last DCS I went to like a decade ago) and everything in between. People have definitely gotten creative over the years with them since the original engine was just not the best.
Didn't get as much done this weekend compared to the last, but did at least get some work done- I was able to get most of the piping and wiring out of the way of the transaxle and get one of the axles unbolted from the transaxle.
It's clear that the stock axles connect far more inboard than the Leaf drivetrain will allow without modifying one of them... I need to find out how the previous DMC that used a Leaf drivetrain handled it- I'm guessing they made custom axles, but I want to make sure that the change in the geometry of that won't mess up the rear suspension travel since it will put the inner rotation point of the axle solidly closer to the wheels than stock.
BoulderG said:It took a while to find this picture, but I guarantee it will be inspirational - perhaps in a "no no no never never ever" sort of way?
Saw this very rare gem at the 2007 Lotus Owner's Group convention in Aspen, Colorado. (At least one other GRMer was there!) Don't know much about the car but it sure looked immaculately done.
(Yes, that really is a Lotus Esprit V-8 Twin Turbo in a Delorean.)
I remember that car, it looked really good.
Sooo... I was kind of busy this weekend. The Dancer's Non-Profit's annual yard sale (held, of course, at our house...) is coming up at the end of the month and donations for it are starting to come in which means that I needed to find a place to put all of them until then (thankfully she's talking like this year may be the last one we do, at least for a little while, since they're a lot of work for us). The best solution of course is to have more of the garage space free to store stuff until the week of the sale when we'll start going through and pricing it. Which also synergized well with my wanting to get the work on the DMC really rolling.
So I spent pretty much the entire day Friday and a good bit of Saturday wrenching away...
So, 99% of the things attached to the frame are now removed- the only stuff really remaining are things that had to be accessed from below which will obviously now be a LOT easier to do and I would guess I will have done by the end of the week.
The next step is to figure out getting all of the old epoxy 'rust protection' and really badly rusted sections removed.
There is a place in town that apparently has the capacity to do media blasting of entire car frames, so I'm going to find out what having the frame blasted clean by them will cost- I imagine it's not going to be cheap but also imagine it will be worth it to not be spending weeks with a grinder and wire wheel trying to do it that way. We'll see. Once that's done I can get to removing the rusted sections that the blasting didn't take out and get started sorting repairing it (and making any mods that will be necessary for the new drivetrain).
I think having the frame professionally blasted is an excellent idea. That's the sort of roadblock that could take forever to overcome as DIY, or you can make it just disappear. I had the replacement used frame for my Land Rover blasted and it made all the difference. I don't recall the cost now - it was 20 years ago - but the fact that it's not memorable combined with my available budget at the time means it couldn't have been too bad.
Blasting is a job that I happily farm out.
I've contacted the local place that was recommended to me- we'll see what they come back with. If their price is reasonable I'll probably try and see about getting the frame to them this Friday. If I'm lucky it will take them a bit of time to get to it and I can put off picking it back up until after the yard sale over Memorial Day weekend so I'll be able to put it back in the garage to work on it.
I'm still not 100% certain of what approach I'm going to take with either welding in the metal to repair the rust damage and brackets for the new hardware or how I want to have it re-rust-protected after (what remains of it at least) the original epoxy coating is removed. Obviously doing the repairs myself will be cheaper- but it would likely mean either picking up a better welding rig (my non-gas wire welding may not be up to the task) or borrowing a better one from someone and making sure that my skills are up to the task. As far as re-coating the frame, the place that can do the blasting also does powder coating and apparently has an oven big enough for the frame- but I'm not certain that powder coating will be the best route to take or not. Some of the suspension parts I've had coated in the past have had the powder coating not hold up the best (hell, I think that it's pretty much gone from the parts on the DMC that I had coated when I was originally working on the car 10 years ago), so I'm interested in what having it zinc electroplated would cost or if there are better coatings for it (most of the DMC group uses POR-15 for small repairs to the original coating, but I don't think having to apply that to the whole frame would be fun).
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