openinverter forum

Hello all, Having just had a couple of heart attacks i have found myself with a lot of time on my hands, The upshot of this is i came across Damien on youtube, don’t worry Damien, I have NOT liked or Subscribed.
This has caused we to rethink my abarth mini project and go electric!!
Due to the british leyland/morris garages collaberations of years gone by i would like to go down the MG route
I will be starting with a bare shell which was allegedly a rover test build for the mpi mini back in the 90’s, apparently thre were car5 stickers all over the parts when it was stripped.
Any thoughts, ideas, advice and heckling is welcome and appreciated, i will no doubt be pestering the life out of you all as the project progresses.
Thanks and apologies in advance

This kit could give you some food for thought. Think they only sell it to businesses but it might be a good benchmark to measure against for your own DIY build…

https://www.fellten.com/system/mini

You might also find some answers using the search function here. There’s another site DIY Electric Car that might have some more answers aswell.

The outlander rear seems a sensible choice, depending on your goals.

+1 for outlander rear drive unit and OBC heck even the outlander battery if your on the budget end and don’t need too much range

Bigpie wrote: ↑Thu Jul 03, 2025 2:45 pm

The outlander rear seems a sensible choice, depending on your goals.

Nice little series there. Hadn’t seen that one before. With bonus special guest start Tom!

But where did they go after episode 8? Seems like they disappeared before the end?

Think they ended up going out of business.

Bigpie wrote: ↑Thu Jul 03, 2025 6:53 pm Think they ended up going out of business.

Ouch. That’s a shame.

Bigpie wrote: ↑Thu Jul 03, 2025 6:53 pm Think they ended up going out of business.

Yea they did could not get the right customers in the end and then kind of hard to keep going.

Ive watched both, the opto mini turned out really nice, also read this through the build thread for this
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=6478
I really like the leaf platform but I don’t know how difficult it would be to split the contents of the top box (charger etc) so it wouldn’t take up so much room.
I’m also interested in the small rear tesla as i reckon it would leave loads of room in the engine bay for everything else

The leaf charger is massive and there are better options. The leaf "stack" can be separated into its individual components, but then you need to mess around with rerouting the HV connections.

That’s what i thought, tremelune turned the inverter 90deg and used 3rd party gear to replace the leaf top box.

Key to all of this really is, whre are you based and what are the legal requirements when doing a conversion.

A leaf motor and drivetrain wont fit without subframe modification. So in some countries is not legal.

I would personally recommend the Outlander rear unit, I have been involved with a few mini conversions in the past (Fellten, Opto and others) and everybody get the level of power they think they want wrong. Builds with outlander rears run at 50% torque and that even can spin up the wheels.

PEDR0 wrote: ↑Fri Jul 04, 2025 8:10 am I really like the leaf platform but I don’t know how difficult it would be to split the contents of the top box (charger etc) so it wouldn’t take up so much room.

For a tear down of the Leaf motor stack search Benjamin Nelson on YT.
For a complete dismantling of the Leaf PDM (top box) hunt for Johannes Hubner on YT.

Thanks Ian, watched ben nelson, i’ll have a look at johannes. I think he does stuff with Damien(evbmw)