This 1958 Chevy Apache pickup looks every inch like a classic, but under the hood, the truck was fitted with new electrified components by Conductive Classics, and is now known as the Chevrolet E-Apache.
The upgraded Conductive Classics Chevy Apache was spotted at the recent Holley High Voltage show at Sonoma Raceway, as seen in the following brief feature video.
The pickup was originally a farm truck from Montana, which the builders found on craigslist. The outside shows a lovely patina, while under the hood, the Chevy Apache was running the original six-cylinder engine. The builders were initially thinking about doing an LS swap, but after looking at all the EV stuff that was coming out, they decided to drop in an electric powertrain instead.
Interestingly, this Chevy Apache still has a manual transmission.
“We didn’t want to go direct drive on this,” says Shane from Conductive Classics. “We wanted it to have a transmission, we wanted it to be a driving experience, we wanted you to be able to shift the gears.”
As such, the front-mounted electric motor connects to a five-speed transmission, which feeds the factory rear end. In fact, everything behind the transmission is as it was in 1958.
Up front, however, is a Hyper 9 electric motor, which looks extremely compact in the engine bay. The new components mount up using a bevy of new custom pieces, all of which were fabricated in-house. Meanwhile, the front end incorporates a full TCI coilover suspension system, plus disc brakes.
Further EV components were mounted in the rear toolbox to keep them hidden and out of sight. That includes the charger, motor control unit, BMS, and converter.
It looks like a very clean install, but the build goes a bit deeper than that. In fact, the folks at Conductive Classics hope to provide the pieces needed to make sure these vehicles aren’t retired in the long run.
“Our real goal with these is just to keep these cars on the road,” says Mike from Conductive Classics. “The older cars are going to fade away to electric power, and if someone doesn’t come up with a way to keep them on the road, then they just won’t be around anymore.”
Check out the build by hitting play right here:
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Comments
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Going electric is the best way to keep old classics running and clean.
This is wrong as these vehicles should be preserved in the form they were for the future.
To me this kills the value of these models. They will never have much range or be very good EV vehicles, only the trucks can hold much battery.
Project X will never see the Hot Rod Power tour again for a full ride.
Interesting. How is it shifting up/down between gears?
wow thats really cool
I really like this idea. Been thinking about a retrofit for a while. If kits can be put together, to make it easy to swap in , this could become common, and with little change to the original car it can be put back, for those of you purists. For around town, with gas at $5 and with most older engines sucking up a lot of that. And how different is a 350kw motor than a turbo or LS swap from an efficiency point? How powerful is that electric? His point was keep these beautiful old classics on the road. And they did that.
Wondering:
The motor here doesn’t look overly large – so I’m glad they didn’t GREATLY overpower the thing.. I DO HAVE A PROBLEM WITH AN OPEN MOTOR however – when driving through big puddles…. The motor should either have been TEFC (Totally-Enclosed Fan Cooled), or else physically heat sinked adequately to prevent water or snow from getting in the windings.
I have a CASE 724 (7 hp Kohler – blown engine, 23 1/2″ High mouth x 24″ wide) dual-input augur 2-stage Snow Blower which I put an underpowered Harbor “Junk” Tools 3 hp 3450 rpm motor on, with a sprocket decreased size change to mimic the original Kohler at 2800 rpm. It develops 5 1/2 – 6 hp but it was a conversion on the ‘cheap’. In that case I took part of an old rubber floor mat to cover the ventilating air inlet of the motor to keep it from sucking in gobs of snow and Ice which would ruin it.. In the very cold, the motor still gets hot enough to prevent rusting or other troubles.
The extension cord is a pain (200 feet combo of #14 and #12 AWG), but it does the job of clearing my rather large corner property as well as both my neighbors’ driveway aprons on either side of me.
How long would the extension cord have to be for the truck?
In the 1970’s , a neighbor swapped in an electric motor to a small rear engine car, filled the backseat with batteries. Used the stock trans , what an easy swap. But back the the modern brushless AC motor that makes modern electric cars possible had not been commercialized yet, the dude was way ahead . And I saw the future.
Whats an oil change ? And now the fuel tank can carry more moonshine!
What it needs is a an engine cover, that looks like a blown Rat motor with headers, and a speaker for some combustion engine mayhem.
The torque of all electric is scary fast. I drive one, I am always first off the line and up to about 80mph.
“Lovely patina”, now there’s an oxymoron.