I'm still here...

Yep, I'm still plugging away at this ol' 'lectric vehicle. I've come to the conclusion that if my current occupation ever dried up I wouldn't have any chance as a purchasing agent. After weeks of looking, fussing, ordering, and re-ordering I'm no closer to getting copper buss bar! The latest news is that I have to place a minimum order of a hundred bucks: all to get a few inches of eighth of an inch thick copper bar. I'm gonna go flatten some copper pipe in the meantime.

When I met my wife she was assembling Synclaviers and Direct-to-Disk workstations. That was many years ago, but she was kind enough to help out in fabricating cables, crimping connectors, and making plugs this weekend. Here's an in progress snapshot:

Despite my inner wish to lay all of the wire out nicely and tie wrap it in place I think we'll hold off until we're sure it works. In addition to the above wiring there's still a little bit left to do in the passenger compartment. I have an extra shunt and meter that will be measuring the current between the controller and the motor. This is an analog meter (EMeter is digital) and is actually a surplus DB meter that's normal position in centered: this is good since we expect current to flow both ways (drive and regen). Here's a photo of the box I made for the meter:

What are all those switches? The top three are for controlling cutback speeds of regenerative braking. I'm not sure how often they'll be used, in fact that's why I've never mentioned them before, I didn't think I was going to use them. But I ended up needing to make a box for the meter and nothing looks better alongside a meter than all kinds of switches. The red switch next to the meter is Forward/Reverse: now I have a choice of using the transmission or electronics for backing up. And finally there is a little, fuzzy switch laying in front of the box. This is a micro switch that will be mounted up under the dash, against the brake pedal shaft. It signals the controller to increase regen when the brake starts being pressed down.

That's not the only wiring I've done. I've been crawling under the car, installing brackets for the vinyl hose (see the last step) and running the big 2/0 cable through the vinyl hose. The photo above shows the black and red cables coming up alongside the rear battery box in the trunk. I have some nice plastic feed-thru's from the hardware store that the cable will go through as soon as I figure out how to drill that big of a hole in my battery box.

Next: Vacuum Pump