Alive!

Yes, it all went quiet, but there has been some progress;

1) The motor shaft adaptor got made. The motor cartridge has an internal spline but I didn't have a matching driveshaft and getting a one off spline cut is close to impossible in this country. Instead I had a castellated piece made and ground the end of the motor sprocket to match. This is attached to a tube which passes through the motor and engages with the gearbox input shaft. To get the spline for that I had to buy a clutch on ebay and extract the centre out of it, which was then turned down and welded into the tube.  All a bit agricultural, but it feels OK so fingers crossed it will take the torque and not cause too much vibration.

2) The motor then needed its electrical connections making - this wasn't straightforward either! The stator terminals are recessed so I machined some solid copper spacers to bring them out clear of the casting so that cable lugs could be bolted down.

3) Then finally on to the wiring.  Actually no, before that, I made a bit of aluminium framework to support the inverter and contactor. This allowed all the wiring to be done with it out on the floor, and then lifted up into the space where the radiator and fan was, where it picks up the original vibration damped mounting points.

The contactor is a temporary one, the voltage I'll be using really calls for a gas filled Kilovac or similar, but I had a big two pole Sagem contactor (rated for about half the voltage).  Good enough for now with the contacts wired in series.
The RMS inverter is a lovely bit of kit, the manual and utility is excellent and apart from one small wiring error on the resolver connections it all checked out and I was able to do the calibrations and setup.

Since it was in and wired up, I couldn't resist trying it. For a quick test I ran the inverter off mains power - just a bit of two core flex plugged into a socket with a bridge rectifier attached gives 360VDC. With some trepidation I donned the safety goggles and clicked the switch to forward. As soon as I touched the throttle the lights dimmed, the motor whirred and the jacked up tyre span. Forwards! Amazing.

Now to put the batteries in and make it work properly...