It's been a week!

I have driven the car for a week now. besides a Blown fuse due to me plugging in a big inverter into a small fused cigarette lighter noting broke. I am still having clutch issues .. I have replaced the master and slave cyl for the clutch and still cant get it bleed. Still no speedometer. I am going outside now to tear apart the dash .. Everyone says on the forums that it goes through the speedo first then to the ECU and the ECU isn't needed. Maybe I got something unplugged. Other than the 23 year old car problems everything has been going great. I have no plans on going back. I am wondering how long I can go without gas till I find that one thing that I need the old truck for .

I saved $

Yesterday I drove to work. I went 32.5 total. This does not include the few hot laps around the work parking lot to show it off. When I got to work I pulled out the old hydrometer. It said 70% left in the pack. Sigh of relief. Everything I read on the internet was true. Then when I returned home I had 40% remaining when I pulled in the garage. The 2nd half of the trip is a bit longer due to eating lunch. A little less than I expected but I am not a good ev driver yet. The hot laps in the parking lot didn't help the pack I am sure. Today I am thinking I will do better but Adam just called and wants lunch :) so who knows where that will be at. well at least I save a guesstimated $8.57. That is $60 a week in gas divided buy 7.

BUGS OUT!

Today I finally got 90% of the bugs out. the major bug was the vibration. So I dissembled the tranny again and finally found the problem. It seem that until 87 that v6 2.8l Chevy engines were externally balanced. This meant the fly-wheel had some extra weight on one side to balance the engine. now that I have a perfectly balanced motor instead of a engine the extra weight makes vibration.This is a little video of the removal of the tranny and motor ... I sped it up. In the middle We went out to get the part machined. I have pictures of that also but i seem to left my cable at the barn.
My clutch still does not work and I still need to adjust the parking brake a bit. but many ev owners do clutch less conversions so it isn't a big deal. Just sometimes it is a job getting 3620 lbs moving and I might want to use first and quick shift to 2nd to get into traffic.. and right now without a clutch that isn't possible. Oh yea the video was actually 7 hrs 1 min with a lunch/ machine shop trip that was cut out.

Today I drove MY EV!

Sorry for the lack of video but today I installed my Curtis controller and went out and found some bugs with the car. But first the good news. After the initial oops Dad and I took a little trip. From Harrisburg to Grove City Autozone in Grove City. 10.7 miles there and 10.7 miles back. We had also been tooling up and down the street all day. It was pretty amazing. Rt 62 is 55 mph street and it was doing it easy. I am impressed with my little car.
Now the bad news. The transmission was moving too much forward and back when you put too much power to it. Dad came up with a unique way to put a mount in to stop it from working the mounts. We got that done but the camera was out of memory. The right front wheel was dragging a bit causing some extra draw on the motor ... I think I need to clean the bolts that mount the caliper on the right front brake. I need to adjust the parking brake some more and I think It will be road worthy.

Wheels a turning! well kinda

Motor Is in. Well Kinda Dad and I put the motor onto the transmission. The bolts that hold the pressure plate on are fragile. Dad had much patience as I broke 2 and extracted them. I am normally very cautious and don't break things but this seemed to be one of those days. So after finding 2 metric bolts to replace the two broken ones I had the entire clutch assembled. After a bit of wiggling it around It slid onto the shaft then in to meet the transmission. I made the jumper wire.
Then I pulled up the suspension a bit to get if off the frame and put 12 v to it it went the wrong way!.. well the non thinker swamped the leads on the battery and IT Still WENT THE WRONG WAY!.. so then I thought to my self. Oh yea when I changed the polarity on the fields i also changed it on the armature. Then I thought to myself. What gear am i in ... Sure enough it was reverse and I had it hooked up correctly.
Now onto the bad news. So the other day when I dropped the transmission I decided to check the level in it ... It was low ... and the fluid was red...Further investigation found the fill with 5w30 oil tab on the fill plug. Well after asking the auto zone guy what type and how much he confirmed it was 3qt of 5w30. Wonder why I had auto transmission fluid in it. I didn't do it but I hope everything is fine and it hasn't been in there for years.
So I fill it to the fill plug and bolt it all back up and put it in the car. I get it all in there and It starts leaking the oil I just put in. Oh great the CV shaft I removed for the Motor adapter tore up the seal. Then I inspected and found that both seals were leaking. Even the one I didn't remove. Oh great. So I probably will drop out the sub frame again and replace both seals. More work! But I don't have a motor controller yet any ways.

MOTOR TOMMROW !

Fedx Called today and scheduled to deliver the motor between 1-4 tommrow ... They had the wrong adress. I hope this isnt a problem and they try to deliver to my one way size streets with a Semi truck. I just got to get the piolit bearing situation settled and I can bolt them together. Hopefully updates this weekend.

Ceramic heater

.


The ceramic heater is a neat thing ... I got to play with it for the first time today after melting my contactor the other day and replacing it. Buy a continuous duty contactor and save yourself some money. I made a little video and I hope it is informative for those interested. Also included is a picture of the melted contactor. It was one I just grabbed at the auto parts store thinking I could save some money. But I got to melt something finally. But I used 12v to do it. :(.

It's too hot to work.

Yesterday it was 90 and today it is 90 so on these days you get materials. all I needed was some wire for extending the PakTrakr remote farther. If anyone knows a reason that I shouldn't do this please speak up. I am just extending the length of 3 of the colored wires to reach the terminals. I read all through the instructions and it didn't say anything bad... I think the black wire has the thermostat in it but I am not gonna touch that one.
I am real close to being done again until parts show up. I need a motor controller and motor and I am done. pilot bearing might be a issue but I will figure it out.
I need to run one wire to the brake pump. I need to install the heater core and run the wires back . Then I need to make the PakTrakr octopus ( eight legged monster) look neat and tidy.
After these things are done I am just waiting on parts. I think I will send a "I am concerned" e-mail about my Curtis tonight. It was under the Impression it would be Augest.

Larry Pratt