Starting to fill the engine compartment

The motor is in the car and I actually spun the rear wheels with a 12 volt battery!  The other good news is I think I'm winning the war with black widows since I took out 4 females and 2 males last night (shudder).  It's amazing I didn't have nightmares last night considering they're the basis for all my childhood fears.  

With the motor in, it's time to start filling the extra space under the hood.  The A/C compressor basically only has one place it can go unless I get all new hoses.  It needs to go to the right of the motor if you're looking from the front of the car.  I got a 1/4 inch plate of aluminum to mount to the front of the motor.  While I'm at it I was figuring out how to mount the blower fan.  Since I plan to run the A/C off the main motor, when I idle at a stop light it'll be going about 700 rpm.  The motor wants to go 1500-2500 rpm to properly cool, so it'll need some help.  I got this 12 volt blower fan and mounted it to the aluminum plate blowing through a hole in it.  

You can see the hole here.  I just have to make an angled duct to turn the airflow down into the motor and cover up all the extra inlet holes.

Here's the bracket I'm working on for the compressor.  I took the old compressor mount and chopped off a bunch of features I don't need.  Then I welded some angle iron to it so it can mount flush to the aluminum plate.  There's an extra "foot" that you can see on the right side.  That'll attach to the motor mount to stiffen the whole thing up a bit.

Fits perfectly!  And even better, the A/C hoses still reach the fittings.  

Pulleys line up? Check
For future reference, I'm thinking of a row of 8-9 batteries in front of the motor and behind the AC condenser, which is kind of below the fan in this pic.  Gotta clear the sway bar too.  So many things to think about!

Belt going to clear the fan?  Check

Next up I've made some cardboard boxes the shape of what I think my batteries will look like.  The original plan was to use 60 of the 70 Ah Calb cells (SE70) and put about 26 of them in the front for weight distribution.  Well, they just a few months ago came out with the CA line of batteries that are supposed to be superior.  Only down side is they don't come in the 70 Ah size!  Well maybe 192 volts wasn't enough and I should go for 70 of the 60 Ah SE cells for a nominal pack voltage of 224.

Either way, I'd like to fit 140 lb of batteries up front, and that will take a surprising about of space.  I'm starting to think I can only get about 20-21 cells in there (~100 lb) without really cluttering things up, but that'll probably be okay.

Next up I'll be making the inlet duct to route the fan air into the motor.  I'm also preparing to buy about 400 parts from mouser and digikey to build the controller board and IGBT drivers.  More on that later...