Isetta EV Hot Rod Build

[electricolive]

The new upper a-arms are getting made from boxed steel plate instead of the 1" DOM tubing in the original arms. I also narrowed up the inner mounting points - they are 7.5" apart instead of the original 10" spread. In combination with relocating the upper pivot points on the subframe, it will give me around 4" more length for my legs and feet. Here is what the arms will look like.

Because the arms curve around the door frame and the inner points are more narrow, there will be a lot more stress on the arms. I had my friend who helped with the CAD design run finite element stress analysis too. We did the loading cases for cornering, braking and hitting a curb. That helped to refine the design and come up with the materials. We are using .135" thick cold rolled steel for the top and bottom plates and 3/16" cold rolled steel bar for the sides and the inner X bracing. They will be plenty strong and they are going to weigh around 12 lbs each.

I have to bend curves into the 3/16" bar to match the curves in the top and bottom plates. That material is not easy to bend by hand - at least not consistently. Luckily, I have an old harbor freight tubing bender that could be modified to help. I had to drill some new holes to put the pins closer together.

Then made a new die out of some 5" OD round tubing.

It worked really well...

Going to weld them up soon - just getting set up with a new welder. I will also have to rebuild the subframe with new plates to relocate the upper a-arm mounts. In retrospect, this is a ton of extra work to gain the 4" of legroom. But, I am doing this because I enjoy building stuff and it was cool figuring all of this out...

I also used the frame that I built in the last post to hold the door's window frame to pry the seam at the top of the door back into shape.

I bought the smallest auto body pull clamp that I could find on Amazon and pried through the eye hook against a block of wood. The heat gun helped to soften the metal and the seam moved pretty easily...

A local paintless repair guy is going to try to push the rest of the dent up so I can keep the patina on most of the door and only repaint the lower parts where I have to weld in new metal.
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Check out the video of Olive here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L54eqGnPGRI&ab_channel=MonolithMotors

[electricolive]

I started to work on the front door. I actually have two doors, so the first order of business is to decide which door to use. The green one or the rusty one. The green door is in rough shape. A tree fell on it which dented the top and ripped the lower hinge completely out of the door. And the bottom is rusted out - and the lower inner structure is completely gone...

The rust colored door is perfect structurally, but is a bit warped and dented across the lower third of the outer sheet metal.

I decided to try to fix the green door for no other reason than I like the patina and am going to try to keep the the car with as much of the original color as possible. I even have the original badges for the door, so it is going to look cool...

First thing I did was to build a frame so I can pull and pry out the dent in the top of the door - the frame will push against the lower part of the window opening when I pry up on the dent.

My mechanic told me about using an induction heater to remove rusted bolts. I bought a cheap one from amazon and it did an great job loosening things. It took some heat, PB Blaster and time, but I was able to remove the 4 screws holding the frozen shut door latch.

I found a cool company in Germany https://www.oldtimerteile.net/ that had both new and used parts for the door including the latch and handles and inner and outer patch panels for the lower door. They even shipped a used windshield to me.

So, lots of work to do to get the door fixed up and mounted. The plan is to have it hinge open, so I will have to rebuild the lower hinge area. I am going to have to use the rusty door frame because the green door frame is really bent up.

Also made progress on the the upper a-arm redesign - will post about that soon.
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Check out the video of Olive here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L54eqGnPGRI&ab_channel=MonolithMotors

[electricolive]

Here is a pic of the seat mock up. It is leaned back to keep my head height low and shifted back as far as possible for the most (but not enough) legroom - you can see how the seat back is notched to clear the back edge of the floor pan.

After looking at things for a while, it dawned on me that the best solution is to move the upper a-arm mounting points forward. I can gain up to 5" that way so I can move the seat forward a few inches and gain a few inches of legroom. I also looked at different front anti roll bar designs and sizes and calculated the wheel rates for each option. The best option came from a circle track company called Hyper Racing. Went with a 26" long splined bar which is short enough to fit forward into the curved part of the front door. I want the links to mount to the lower a-arms at 28" (or more) apart to get a better motion ratio, so I bought some blank arms with just the splined hole, so I can bend them and cut them down to the right length and drill holes for the links. Hyper Racking were very helpful in helping me select the right torsion bar, I went with Schroeder .825" hollow bar with 7/8" splines which should be plenty stiff. Here are a few pics of where the bar will be located and how it fits inside the door...

I bought the parts to further modify the upper a-arms and will start on that soon. You can see from this pic from above how I can move one or both of the upper a-arm mounts forward, just have to keep clear of where the coil over will be mounted down to the lower control arm (they will mount be further outboard and be angled up quite a bit compared to the wood blocks holding the suspension at ride height.

Not a whole lot of progress recently. I am tied up with a work project and will be back working more on the Isetta in June. Busstom, good guess on the 'electric olive' origin story. It actually pre-dates both this electric car project and the Doka named Olive in an awesome case of foreshadowing. It comes from a Rockford files episode from season 4 in 1977 called 'Beamer's Last Case'. In that episode, when Rockford is out of town, his mechanic steals his identity, wrecks his car, and orders a bunch of random and unnecessary private eye gear on Jim's credit card. The electric olive is part of that gear - a listening device hidden inside an olive so you can bug someone's martini...
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Check out the video of Olive here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L54eqGnPGRI&ab_channel=MonolithMotors

[Busstom]

And now I see where "electric olive" comes from (or do I ), I just watched your doka video. Pretty slick ride there.

Seeing the Vanagon parking brake setup under your truck (specifically the equalizer underneath) gives me some more ideas as I'm also in a parking brake quandary with my highly modified Bus. I'll likely be gleaning more ideas from you as this build progresses.
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My name's Steve and it's pronounced "Bust 'em" (cuz people think I'm Tom)

[Busstom]

So you're essentially lying down in it. One thing that might make that slightly more comfortable is an added headrest/cushion that props your head up some (think F1 seating...in fact, those guys are literally lying down like astronauts with feet propped up nearly at eye-level).

On that subject, I'd strongly lean toward your notion of lengthening where necessary to add that legroom you're after while it's (relatively) easy at this point; you risk potential disappointment down the road when it turns into nuisance discomfort. I'd be very interested to see a seat mockup, it sounds real similar to what I'm doing with my Bus at the moment. I haven't measured my seat angle yet, but it's similar to a supercar ergo. I won't be turning my head much for checking blindspots, some other provisions will be in order.
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My name's Steve and it's pronounced "Bust 'em" (cuz people think I'm Tom)

[electricolive]

External Handbrake would be fun... Did more work to see how I will fit in the car. Bought a Wilwood reverse swing pedal assembly for the clutch and brake with some compact cylinders - seems good to fit the cylinders rearward away from the suspension and the gauge cluster will mount right above them.

Cut a notch out of the body at the package tray and the removed most of the old seat mount on the floorpan so I could sit in the space and see how it feels.

The site lines are good with at seat back angle leaned back to 55 deg from horizontal and the top of my head is about 1" above the top of the windsheild which should be fine). But, it is not a very comfortable seating position...

Could use more legroom. 3 more inches would be ideal. Right now, the seat bottom is as far back as possible at the rear of the floorpan. I could cut the rear of the floorpan out and gain a few inches by moving the seat bottom back to the axle tube. That will be a bit of work. The easier thing would be to lengthen the wheelbase. Here is the side view at the 84.5" wheelbase that I prefer the look of.

And here is +2" - 86.5" wheelbase.

And here is +3" - 87.5" wheelbase.

Will contemplate the wheelbase while I work on other things. Will either stick with the short wheelbase or go with the +2" wheelbase and tweak the rear floorpan as necessary...
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Check out the video of Olive here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L54eqGnPGRI&ab_channel=MonolithMotors

[finster]

we've got to think outside the bubble - an external handbrake would introduce an extra note of individuality...it could stick up out of a slot in the side pod
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"we're here on Earth to fart around" kurt vonnegut

nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect...

[electricolive]

Good idea to relocate the e-brake, oprn. It is likely going to want to occupy the same spot on the tunnel as the shifter - just in front of the seats. The shifter itself also has possibilities for a unique solution - planning a 2 speed gearbox by modifying the Type 1 transmission so just need a simple fwd and back shift pattern...
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Check out the video of Olive here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L54eqGnPGRI&ab_channel=MonolithMotors

[oprn]

The E brake on the 944s is on the driver's left side next to the door. Just a suggestion...
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Our cars get old, we get old but driving an old VW never gets old!

[electricolive]

Very good eye Finster! The door height is indeed troubling and one of two issues that will make it hard to fit two humans in this thing. I welded the door frame to the front subframe at least an inch too low. There was only about 3" of ground clearance below the bottom of the door in last post and I am shooting for 4-5" to not scrape the ground too much.

Here is what the front door looks like raised up 1". The other variable I have is to change the angle of the door but I think it looks best with the door frame laid back at the 45 deg angle shown here. I estimated where my eyes will be with a somewhat reclined seating position and a few inches of seat cushion on top of the floor pan. I laid out two pieces of round bar to show the site lines to the bottom and top of the windshield.

So, the upper site line is pointing upward which is nice, but the top of the door will be about the same height as the middle of my forehead. I will raise the door up another inch and/or recline the seating position a bit more. The downward site line angle looks OK - I was concerned that might be a problem to see what is directly in front but it is similar to my other 'normal' cars. There will not be much legroom with the reclined seating position because the upper control arms moved back 5" and I want to keep the wheelbase short, so I am researching compact reverse swing pedals and master cylinders for the brake and clutch. The top of the door is now 40" above the ground - that is the same height as the roof of the Ford GT-40 racecar in the 60's...

The other issue is there is not enough width between the sides of the Isetta body for two people to sit side by side because the really low seating position means that the top of the seat cushions will be below the top of the VW tunnel. The width of the tunnel pushes the seating positions too far outward. This will have to be solved and my best guess is there will be some widening of the body followed by cutting a chunk out of the tunnel to move the seats closer together. I expect to leave just enough room for the shift rod and e-brake cables to pass between the seats. There will be a perimeter frame eventually so the tunnel won't be needed for the structure. It will be a bit of a process to get there because I don't want to build the perimeter frame until I know how wide the body will be and what shape it will have along the bottom edges. The plan is to make a rolling chassis by welding the tunnel and front subframe together and finalize the position of the door so I can hang the body in place with its own internal structure built off the door frame. Then make the perimeter frame for the chassis and finally chop up the tunnel to make room for the seats. If all goes well the whole body and front door will pivot upward from the bottom of the front door frame for easy access to work on the chassis. So that is the plan, I am excited to see how things actually come together...
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Check out the video of Olive here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L54eqGnPGRI&ab_channel=MonolithMotors

[finster]

amazing fabrication work - the stuff of dreams

however, looking at this photo it looks like the top of the door/screen is going to be a bit low or at eye level.

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"we're here on Earth to fart around" kurt vonnegut

nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect...

[mikec4193]

Love this project....

Always enjoy seeing stuff like this....you will have a cool little hot rod when it is all said and done...

Your progress looks great from here... keep at it buddy

MikeC
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Dad bought his first Beetle on Dec 17, 1953.

[electricolive]

Thanks! I am having fun with the project and enjoying this opportunity to learn new things and make something cool.

I said I was going to take a break from the front suspension work, but the location of the steering rack and tie rods at the front of the spindles was really bothering me. It really limits how far the door can move back into the pocket created by the banana shaped upper control arms. So I decided to see if I could move the rack and tie rods to the rear of the spindle. I could swap left and right spindles so the brake calipers mount at the front and the steering arm bracket for the outer tie rod is at the rear. And, if I flip the steering rack 180 deg, the car will at least steer in the correct direction when the steering wheel is turned! The downside is the Ackerman designed into the spindles will be backwards (outside tire turning more than inside tire) and the only way to fix that is to change up the location of the outer tie rod bracket on the spindles and make sure the resulting geometry is correct for zero bump steer.

So down the rabbit hole of internet searches, measurements, calculations, spreadsheets and a bit of trial and error to the promised land of zero bump steer. Although there are more complicated bump steer formulas, I picked this simple one.

This works well because the inner tie rod is already inline with the inner upper and inner lower control arm pivots. So all I had to do was put the outer tie rod location along a line between the outer pivots for the upper and lower arms. I did this with a 3/8 OD steel rod and a few rod ends and was careful to set the out tie rod height so the projected line along the angle of the tie rod would intersect the same point where the upper and lower control arm angles meet (see 'intersection point' on diagram). I did my best to measure all the pivot points on the frame table and made a spreadsheet to calculate the angles and intersection point. Could have done this in CAD, but I not very good at CAD yet.

I tacked the middle rod end to the spindle to hold the position of the rod end center, then made a temporary steering arm bracket to pick up the center of that rod end. Then I could cut the rod end off the spindle. I kept the bracket at the correct angle so I would get at least 5" of up travel and 10" of down travel before the tie rod end binds in the high misalignment spacers.

So that all went smoothly and then there was a bunch of fiddling to get to zero bump steer when I cycled the suspension up and down. I planned to shim the steering rack up to fine tune the tie rod angle to zero out the bump steer, but that did not work. I had to leave the rack at its lowest point and move the outer tie rod end up slightly by using shorter high misalignment spacers to get the correct tie rod angle. Very glad it eventually worked.

And here is a pic of the relocated steering rack and tie rod from above. I was able to add Ackerman in the correct direction by moving the steering rack rearward so the tie rods move the inside wheel to a sharper angle than the outside wheel when turning - another spreadsheet helped me figure that geometry out. Moving the pivots for the control arms and/or the steering rack forward or rearward does not affect the bump steer.

Next up was getting the front suspension and its subframe mocked up with the floorpan to see how everything looks and how much interior space is left (answer: not much) with the 85" wheelbase that has the best proportion. I had to chop about a foot off the front of the floorpan first.

Then I welded the door frame to some brackets so it could pivot on the subframe to fine tune the look of the door angle and site lines thru the windshield. And I cut some wood blocks to wedge between the lower coil over mount and the subframe to hold the suspension at normal ride height.

Then put the full mock up back together - funny that it looks exactly like zero progress from the mock up of 9 months ago!

But it is really nice to have an actual front suspension that allows the door to fit really far back relative to the front wheels - so calling this a win...

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Check out the video of Olive here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L54eqGnPGRI&ab_channel=MonolithMotors

[EVfun]

[Busstom]

Awesome. I've been quietly following and gleaning motivation from you.

Ton of work, keep the updates coming.
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My name's Steve and it's pronounced "Bust 'em" (cuz people think I'm Tom)

[electricolive]

The front suspension mods are mostly done, but not without a few hiccups...

I wanted to change the angle of the tabs on the spindle that attach the steering tie rod end. Changing the angle will give more up travel (and less down travel) before the rod ends bind. I wanted to keep the center of the rod end in the same place so I don't mess up the bump steer. After a little bit of thought, I came up with the idea to bolt in a cheap rod end and weld it to the spindle body.

Then, I could cut the tabs off the spindle

And re-weld them 10 degrees closer to horizontal without affecting the center pivot point of the tie rod

Next up was cutting apart the body of the spindle and re-assembling it with the new plate to change the spindle height and the new caliper bracket. Modified spindle is on the right - the spindle is dropped about 1.8".

I bought a pair of QA-1 coil overs for the front end. That was a big process of weighing all the car parts, estimating the front sprung weight, calculating the expected motion ratio based on the coil over mounting position on the a arm and angle and looking at the suspension range of motion vs ride height to finalize the shock length of travel and spring rate. When I fit them in the lower control arm, the did not fit inside the plate on top of the arm that holds the the lower mounting tabs and there was not much room to get to the adjustment knob.

I had the great idea to swap the control arms side to side and flip them over so the mounting tabs were pointing up instead of down and made a plate to box the new 'top' of the control arms.

That did not work out well because it coil overs hit the door frame well before the upper a arm and tie rod when the suspension is compressed.
So I flipped the lower control arms back their normal sides and ground out clearance for the coil over body and adjuster.

This seemed like it would work fine. The coil over was much further from the door, but now the tie rod runs into the coils when the steering is a full lock.

That is a bummer, but I should be able to fix this by making new shock mounts that are more inboard to clear the door and higher above the lower control arm so they are above the tie rod. There is plenty of room for the inboard shock mount to go up and in because of the way the front door curves. Future Bob can deal with all that because I am ready to switch gears from the suspension work.

With the suspension changes you can see how much further back the door can sit relative the front wheels.

This is what I have been working to achieve. Next, I will temporarily secure the door and door frame to the suspension sub frame and finalize the wheelbase and move on with refining the shape of the body. Lots to do!
_________________
Check out the video of Olive here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L54eqGnPGRI&ab_channel=MonolithMotors

[electricolive]

Been a while since the last update - lots going on - here is the progress on the front suspension mods. I was able to get drawings done in SolidWorks and off to SendCutSend to laser cut these steel plates. Took quite a bit of time and iteration to get dimensions right.

First up is the upper a-arm mod. I tack welded one of the laser cut plates and a 1" wide 3/16" thick piece of steel to fix a new bung in place 5" forward of the existing bung. Made a simple fixture from a piece of wood and used a bunch of c-clamps...

Then, re-made the subframe with mounts for the upper a-arm shifted back from the lower a-arms mounts that same 5" distance.

This gets front of the front tires ahead of the front door, so I am happy with the way this is working out.

Next up will be some changes to the upright to create a dropped spindle. This will give the a-arms more clearance to the door for suspension travel. You can see how one plate will move the spindle up on the upright almost 2" and then the caliper bracket has to change to move the caliper up that same distance.

Will make those and some other changes to the upright in the next post. And when the spindle drops, I noticed the brake caliper will collide with the new a-arm plates at full steering lock - so I have some trimming to do...

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Check out the video of Olive here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L54eqGnPGRI&ab_channel=MonolithMotors

[electricolive]

Have a plan for the front A-arm suspension modifications - thanks to Casey at Protolite Racing for helping me sort everything out. I am going to shift the upper a-arms back 5" on the frame (relative to the lower a-arms and steering rack) and cut off the outboard ends of the a-arms and add a boxed section to move the outboard heim joint 5" forward. The arms will be banana shaped when viewed from above. This will provide more clearance between the upper a-arms and the front door frame. Basically allowing the front wheels to move closer to front of car without have to modify the front door too much.

Next mod will be to the uprights - creating a dropped spindle by adjusting the upper and lower control arms and steering pivots relative the spindle and caliper bracket while keeping the same geometry between the a-arms and steering pivots. Again, this will improve the clearance between the upper a-arm and tie rod to the front door frame to move the front wheels forward. Casey sent me a set up uprights that are just tack welded, so I can re-use some the parts and design some new parts and get them laser cut and then weld it all together. I also bought a second set of the brackets for the a-arm frame mounts - that will help me locate the different upper and lower a-arm positions on the front tube frame.

And finally, I am going to incorporate an anti roll bar mount on the frame and add brackets on the a-arms for the links - been looking at adjustable anti roll bars for atvs and cross carts. I am also re-thinking the Fox 2.0 shocks - seems like they take a bit of work to tune and it will be more straight forward to get two sets of coil overs - a short one for the street and one with longer travel for off-roading. I am going to put the front suspension in CAD so I can sort out all of the design details.

In preparation for the design changes, I set the suspension up with a few different camber and caster settings and moved it through the range of travel and recorded the bump steer (change in toe as the suspension travels). It is pretty wild how much the suspension droops down. The 19" of travel is much more than I will need. I am going to change the angle of the upright tabs for the outer tie rod steering pivot so the suspension can do several more inches of up travel and less droop. So hopefully I will still have good bump steer when I make all the mods to the upper a-arm and uprights!

Also looked at how the battery pack (cardboard box is the approximate size), motor controller, dcdc converter and 12V battery and battery charger (on other size of battery pack) will all fit. The grey box on the left will house a contactor and current shunt and a few other components. This gives me a good idea how much I can trim off the sides of the package tray to make room for the rear coil overs.

Removed the package tray so I can plan how to add some structure to support it. The rough idea is to weld a roll bar to torsion tube and then some horizontal steel tube from that to support the package tray. Spending more time than I expected figuring things out rather than fabricating - feels like time well spent and will be cutting and welding eventually...
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Check out the video of Olive here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L54eqGnPGRI&ab_channel=MonolithMotors

[electricolive]

Thanks! I have been thinking/dreaming about this combo of EV, VW and Isetta for years. It is really satisfying to be making progress. Accepting the reality of the situation - this will be a lot of work, this is a stretch of my car building skills, and I may need help along the way - is an important part of the process for me to stay focused enjoy the build.

I built a light weight frame table with adjustable feet (for leveling) by repurposing a 4'x4' plant table from a nursery. It is made of angle iron and I added some 1"X2" square tube to make a level top surface and cut some 2"x2" cross bars that can be clamped down where needed.

And the front suspension arrived from Protolite Racing! This suspension is designed for a motorcycle powered side by side off-road buggy / cross cart.
One of the owners, Casey, has been really helpful by discussing how to adapt this for my build. https://www.ptlracing.com/Front-Suspension_c_1.html

I put the frame table to good use building a subframe to mount the suspension to so I could mock it up and see how high it will mount relative to the VW tunnel and floor pans.

Here is the first mock up with the subframe ontop of the tunnel. This is not bad, but I want to mount the suspension lower in the car so I can move it forward towards the front of the door. Either way I will have to notch the front door frame and door edges for clearance to the a-arms for suspension travel. Casey and I talked through a few options to lower the suspension mount at the spindle for more clearance to the door - like flipping the spindles over which also requires swapping the upper and lower a-arms. Dropped spindles with the same geometry for the a-arms is another option.

It was a long process to arrive at the Protolite Racing suspension. I considered a lot of options including a solid front axle and VW torsion beams. The things that got me here were the track width, the long travel of 19", and the cleaner look. For a microcar, the Isetta is surprisingly wide and the VW suspension track width of 51.5" put the tires deep into the body with any significant steering angle. The track width of the a-arm suspension with the wheel adapters and the old front wheels from my Doka is 67" and there is plenty of clearance for steering. I could have gone with a much wider torsion beam with coil overs or spliced two axles together and kept the torsion bars, but overall I did not want to see the shocks or coil overs sitting vertically between the body and wheel and I would have wanted to flip the beam so the trailing arms faced forward so the wheels were closer to the front of the car. I even thought about adding a bellcrank and pushrod to move the coil overs inboard, but I did not think I could pull that off. The solid axle could have worked if I could get one wide enough - or cut two down for twin beams, but I would not have the same suspension travel or ride quality as the double a-arms. And because I was debating whether the Isetta would have a low hot rod look or a raised off road stance - it is a bonus that this suspension can do both and the Fox 2.0 air shocks can make that ride height change by adjusting nitrogen pre charge. So I am stoked to have this mocked up and will finalize the wheelbase, cut down the tunnel and sort out how to optimize the clearance to the front door as I lower the suspension...
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Check out the video of Olive here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L54eqGnPGRI&ab_channel=MonolithMotors

[dc]

Very cool

The larger heat sink does look quite nice! I would love to make a rear engine EV hot rod - thinking an old chopped Oval window baja body would be cool

Love vintage VWs and Drive a Fiat 500E and a Chevy Volt on the daily...
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1963 Karmann Ghia