The Thermal Club · Full-vehicle integration
Tesla-powered Triumph Stag.
A 1970s British grand tourer rebuilt around a 2021 Tesla Model S powertrain, fourteen liquid-cooled battery modules, and a completely new electrical nervous system.
Preserve the car. Replace the operating system.
The Triumph Stag is a four-seat British sports tourer styled by Giovanni Michelotti and produced from 1970 to 1977. It left the factory with a 3.0-liter V8, rear-wheel drive, and a distinctive T-bar structure. This project keeps the Stag’s character while replacing the original propulsion architecture with a modern electric system.
The conversion is not a motor swap in isolation. Battery placement affects mass distribution and service access; the high-voltage path must coexist with low-voltage controls; cooling has to support both energy storage and the drive unit; and the driver still needs familiar, legible feedback. Muhammad’s role covers that complete electrical chain—from component selection and wiring through controls setup and system commissioning.
Define the interfaces before routing the first wire.
The propulsion foundation is an EV West universal conversion package built around a Tesla Model S large drive unit and EV Controls T2-C controller. The LDU combines the motor, inverter, and reduction gearbox; the supporting package supplies the throttle and brake interfaces, precharge hardware, axles, charge port, charger, DC-DC conversion, contactor hardware, and control electronics needed to turn that assembly into a vehicle system.
The project-specific battery is a fourteen-module Tesla Model S pack. At the listed module ratings, that architecture is approximately 74.2 kWh and 319.2 volts nominal, rising to 352.8 volts at the module charge cutoff. Those values sit inside the drive unit kit’s published 275–400-volt input range, while leaving the BMS, charger, contactors, cooling hardware, and instrumentation to be integrated around the vehicle’s actual packaging.
Turn fourteen used modules into one known pack.
Each EV West module is rated at 22.8 volts nominal and 5.3 kWh, with 444 cylindrical cells arranged 74-parallel by 6-series. Across fourteen modules, the vehicle contains 6,216 cells. Before integration, the work required checking the modules as electrical assemblies: confirming cell-group readings, inspecting connections and coolant interfaces, and establishing that the set could operate together under one BMS.
Assembly then became a packaging and repeatability problem. Modules had to be retained without loading vulnerable features, linked with controlled high-voltage connections, connected to cell-monitoring harnesses, and kept accessible enough to diagnose. The enclosure work split the pack across vehicle locations while preserving a single electrical architecture.
Make every measurement believable before trusting the pack.
Programming the BMS started with configuration, but troubleshooting depended on evidence. Module count and cell topology had to match the physical harness. Cell-group voltages had to be plausible and consistent. Temperature inputs, balancing behavior, pack limits, and communications then had to agree with what the hardware was actually doing.
Muhammad used live serial data and in-vehicle checks to trace mismatches between configuration, wiring, and reported values. The goal was not merely to clear a fault; it was to identify whether the fault represented an unsafe electrical condition, an incorrect parameter, a connection problem, or a communications issue before enabling the next stage of the system.
Control when energy can move—and where it cannot.
The high-voltage distribution enclosure concentrates the contactors, precharge path, service disconnect, protection, and measurement interfaces that sit between the battery and inverter. Wiring this layer required more than point-to-point continuity: conductor routing, termination quality, strain relief, polarity, insulation, and service access all influence whether the system can be energized and diagnosed safely.
Low-voltage command wiring was kept legible alongside the orange high-voltage conductors so that the contactor sequence and interlocks could be traced during troubleshooting. The completed enclosure became the controlled gateway between stored energy and the rest of the car.
Treat fluid routing as part of the electrical system.
The Tesla modules include integrated liquid-cooling passages, and the drive unit and inverter also depend on managed temperatures. The conversion therefore needed a coolant network that could reach separated hardware without obstructing service access or exposing electrical connections to avoidable leak risk.
Muhammad’s integration work included connecting the module interfaces, routing lines through the available structure, coordinating pumps and auxiliary power, and checking the physical system before sustained operation. Hose support, bend radius, high points that can trap air, bleed access, and separation from terminals were treated as installation constraints—not cleanup after the electrical design.
Translate driver inputs into controlled torque.
The EV Controls T2-C sits between the Stag’s driver controls and the Tesla inverter. Motor tuning meant configuring the controller around the installed hardware, then checking throttle and brake inputs, direction and drive-state logic, torque response, regeneration behavior, current limits, and reported temperatures without skipping directly to maximum output.
At the same time, the custom low-voltage harness had to distribute power and signals to the BMS, controller, dash, charger interfaces, pumps, fans, relays, switches, and retained vehicle features. Muhammad designed and built that harness, then traced wiring and communications faults as individual subsystems were brought online.
Make charging a coordinated vehicle state.
The charging system had to match the fourteen-module pack while remaining subordinate to the BMS. Configuration connected the charger’s voltage and current behavior to pack limits, cell monitoring, contactor control, and fault handling. The charge inlet, high-voltage path, DC-DC system, and low-voltage wake-up behavior also had to function as one sequence.
Bring-up was staged: verify communication and sensed values, confirm the pack state, establish the permitted charging conditions, and monitor cell-group and temperature data as energy entered the system. That sequence turned the charger from an isolated component into a controlled part of the vehicle.
Expose the data needed to drive—and the data needed to debug.
The digital dash evolved in parallel with the vehicle. Early layouts proved the communication path and basic gauge behavior. Later versions reorganized the screen around driver priority: pack voltage, drive mode, motor speed, current, power, throttle and brake state, and temperatures across the inverter and motor-control hardware.
Muhammad programmed and calibrated the dash for real-time telemetry, using each installation to evaluate legibility, hierarchy, and whether the displayed signals matched the controller and BMS. The progression is visible from the first loose display to the refined interface installed behind the Stag steering wheel.
Prove the interfaces in sequence, then prove the vehicle.
Commissioning joined work that had previously been verified one subsystem at a time. The practical sequence moved from low-voltage power and communications, through BMS plausibility and interlocks, contactor and precharge behavior, charger operation, cooling auxiliaries, inverter readiness, driver inputs, motor response, and finally complete telemetry.
The project remains active. The demonstrated scope is the engineering process itself: selecting hardware, assembling and testing the battery modules, integrating cooling, configuring and troubleshooting the BMS, building the low-voltage harness, tuning the motor controller, configuring charging, and developing the dash into an instrument the driver can actually use.
Vehicle and component specifications are based on the supplied Triumph Stag background, EV West battery-module listing, LDU starter-kit listing, and universal conversion-package listing. Ratings describe the listed hardware; the project page does not claim a completed vehicle performance figure.