Planning for the Conversion 

After getting the car plans for our conversion started in earnest. We knew that there wasn't a realistic world that would have us losing performance when swapping out the old 4-cylinder so we weren't too concerned about power. This wasn't a car we were planning on racing. We focused on 3 main factors  for our conversion.  

1. Firstly we wanted to maximize our range as much as is reasonable, we had three different goals for range. 

   1. 300ish miles in order to go see family in Spokane, we knew this was more like wishful thinking.  

   2. 120+ miles in order to make it over the mountains to Leavenworth as well as to comfortably do a round trip to visit our parents in the area. 

   3. 40 miles for just standard commuting. 

2.  The second goal was keeping the car looking as stock as possible. Ideally keeping the back seat intact and not losing it to accommodate more batteries. 

3. Third we wanted the conversion to look as clean and professional as we could make it. 

We started going through what type of equipment could get us as close to the goals as possible, waffling between scrounging a forklift motor, sourcing a Netgain, or going with a AC motor. 

We kept coming back to the conversion package offered by EV West. It was a little more expensive than individually sourcing a DC system, and quite a bit more expensive than finding used or repurposing equipment. And the installations they were doing looked so good.