Come on... smile!

One of my favorite jokes about electric cars is "There are more Tuckers on the road then EV1's." So you can imagine how interested I was when I saw that there are not one, but two restored EV1's out there.

The first belongs to WWU; and they have been very faithful in restoring this car.

The other belongs to UW Madison. They have changed out the inverter and charger, but kept (and were able to get) the original batteries.

While there are still more Tuckers on the road (49); there are now 200% more EV1's (2) than I thought. And Jay Leno still can't get one.

Now this is new.

One of my plans has always been to sand blast the car, and put on a new color. Nothing wrong with canary yellow; but it's a tad to 70's. Last night I saw this : http://www.calblast.com/ on TV.

Who knew? Use baking soda instead of sand. Unless they charge way more than a sand blaster, I am so going to do this. It's just too cool.

BTW the new color I'm thinking about is Audi's "Deep Sea Blue Pearl Effect". I think getting the running boards power coated black and the chrome trim should really look nice.

Silver lining on the gray clouds.

First the grey clouds:
Well Murphy had his way with me. I was planning to get the car into the garage as fast as possible. No reason to contribute to more rust. So I had to clear up floor space to move the car in. The soonest the new cabinets could be installed was yesterday.

Sure enough with the new storage space; I was able to move that car into the garage today…. of course it rained yesterday. Hard.

I live in So-Cal so we only get like five day of rain a year. And Murphy insisted the car get rained on one last time.

Well if that’s the only time Murphy shows up, I’ll count my blessings.

Now the silver lining:
Since the car got soaked I took some time today to further disassemble the interior and pull more carpet and linings out. And it really does appear that the rust is only on the passenger side engine compartment.

Oh, I found out what the technical term for the ‘shape’ of the trunk hood is; it’s “sprung”. There are two coasters the are suppose to provide a three point hinge. But the restrainers can rust away (or just get broken off). But that’s where the trunk rust I have came from.

No rust in the drivers side (just rain water) controls.

Front trunk has a light dusting of it; but most of the grim brushed clean.

Here's the rust that I'll have to fix. But it will really keep me busy.

Glamor shot with the hood off. Nice! BTW the spot of rust on the finder is really where the radio antenna used to be. That will be filled in; I'll be going iPod or maybe satellite radio.

I've been to the mountain top.

My Dad had a dream and he imparted that dream onto his sons. I now live that dream. May I present to you:

Two cars in a two car garage!

I would like to thank my wife and daughters (who graciously allowed me to park their vehicles behind the Porsche).

Already late?

Dag-nab-it. I figured with 4 days I could get the electrical pulled; heck I was thinking of even getting the dash-board pulled. But no.

In defense I will state that other electrical work got in the way:

Our street got a little carried away this year. Which for the kids isn't a bad thing. (And I must admit for the kid in me as well)

But now it will be two weeks before I get to work on the car. This weekend I'll be working like a mad man to get the garage prepped to move that car inside. I have to move some stuff into cabinet, that have to be built, that need old ones torn down to build the new ones. So I have room for the car. But I'll get to put an epoxy floor down, so that's a bonus.

I just have to get this before we have rain (we have 5 days of rain coming up soon).

Dusk before the dawn

Today's goal is the complete removal of the electrical system. Now obviously I'll need to put this back it, so this will be a removal, not deconstruction.

Fortunately I'll be taking a lot of pictures; so I'll know how to put it back in. Always a plus.

Wish me luck.

Where the rust is.

I knew that there was going to be some restoration. So without further ado; I present to you, The Rust.

The trunk. But just the back potion. This should be a quick job with a plasma cutter and a replacement plate.

Engine compartment, passenger side. Normally you can't see daylight. So this is through two sheets of metal. We're talking some serious restoration here.

Engine compartment, driver's side; fortunately there is no rust here. Just some ex-plant life. Gonna have to look at shop-vac.

Passenger compartment. Sweet, the rust never made it out of the engine compartment. This is completely solid.

Front storage. Other then being filthy, no rust to speak of.

Bonus! I found that the spare (in addition to being shredded) was a 5th matching rim, so the wheels are going to be far better than I'd hoped. Also; all four wheels on the car have disk brakes (I seem to recall the back brakes were drums as stock).

It all seems so easy

Tasks:
1) Disassembly (pull interior and misc external)
2) Assess body and rust repair requirements.
3) Drop engine and transmission.
4) Remove hoods
5) Remove doors
6) Sand blast
7) Metal work to repair rust (and there is some)
8) Prime frame and body parts
9) ** Install conversion parts **
10) ** Remove conversion parts **
11) Final paint
12) Install conversion parts
13) Wire conversion
14) Install batteries
15) Change batteries
16) Drive car.

Steps 9 and 10 are the deluxe build steps. It really should be done this way. But If I skip those steps I can get the car restored much faster. And once the car looks awesome; I should be re-invigorated to complete the conversion.

Get organized.

First and foremost I have fallen victim to one of the classic blunders! The most famous is never get involved in a land war in Asia, but the third one slightly less well-known is this: Never try to convert a car to electric when you have to restore it as well!

So I have two jobs to schedule out; restore the car and convert to electric. Aside from the work there is only one area where this posses a problem. After getting the restoration done I have to hack some of the newly restored car up to convert it.

Most notably the controller installation: I have to cut the bottom of the trunk open. The best way to do this, is before final body work and paint. But that would mean con-current work paths. And that my friend might be an issue.

Old busted and new hotness

It’s plan A time!

I’ve purchased a Porsche 914 and now it’s time to make it electric! The details are 144 volt AC system from EletroAutomotive.

I present Old and Busted:

(The car I bought)

Now I present New Hotness:

(The car I own)

They may seem to be the same car. But there is a subtle difrerence.

It’s all about the Benjamin’s

This site is going to be used for my plan to convert a car into an electric car. Or, as those in the know put it: from ICE to EV.

However the job I had when I started making my plans has changed, and the huge sums of free cash that I planed to drop when away. But not the drive to make an EV (pun intended).

The plan is get a downer car, pull the engine, adapt a electric motor and mount a ton (ok one thousand pounds so only ½ a ton) of batteries. I had planed to do this to a Porsche 914; then a Mazda Miata.

I had planed to do an AC conversion; but now and thinking of starting with a DC conversion first. Just to get my feet wet as it were.

Maybe time for plan C….