EV Conversion Diary

I spent extra money making sure I wouldn't overcharge my batteries and kill them. That's the most common cause of battery death among EV owners, after all.

Meanwhile, my YellowTops have self-discharged over the long period I've been ignoring the car. When I finished wiring them up today, everything looked fine; but when I turned on the charger, all the regulator warning lights came on.

A quick check of the most accessible batteries (the four under the hood) showed voltages around 6V each. That's dead, dead, dead: 10V is regular dead. 6V is irreversible damage.

Last weekend we had the family get-together, so Nathan and I couldn't work on the car. He came over on his other day off, Monday, to get some work done.

He discovered that the passenger-side axle AutoZone sold us was the wrong one. Unfortunately, he didn't figure it out until after it was in the car. And by that time, the lower ball joint nut was stuck. Of course that's a pain, because there's nothing to grab hold of: the axle just spins instead of holding still so the nut will come off.

It wasn't all bad news, though: he also got the motor mounted, retapped the transmission mount hole, mounted the transmission, made a little bracket to hold the accessory tray in place, and finally, cut and mounted the tray, too.

This week we actually got together while Eri and the kids went to Daytona to celebrate Memorial Day with her parents and the rest of the seniors. I figure building an EV is a fitting memorial: the more of us who do it, the less oil will be a "strategic resource" that needs to be defended with soldier's lives.

I've been swamped with family stuff for a couple of weeks; very little has gotten done on the EV. Nathan came over Saturday to fix that. He did make some progress, but not as much as he'd hoped.

He also left behind a trail of stuff that needed attention over the week. I just ruined my favorite shirt taking care of it.

Grinder fail!

Of course, Nathan's description of throwing sparks everywhere just made me want to try it myself. Unfortunately, the reality was different. And at Toolbane, catastrophic.