EVCCON 2014 Day -2

I flew from my new home in Thailand to Cape Girardeau, Missouri for the 4th annual Electric Vehicle Conversion Convention (EVCCON).  It's a gathering of electric car self-builders and we basically geek out for a week on sessions, discussions, hands-on, a parade through town, autocross, drag racing, dynamometer rating and generally getting liquored up and playing with high voltage.

I arrived on what I'll call Day -2 of the convention, thinking I was early but 6 guys had already arrived and started work on one of the shop projects, doing an electric conversion on a Smart car from a kit made by a German vendor whose name I can't remember right now.  The show doesn't officially start until the Tuesday evening reception and then the convention starts in earnest on Wednesday.  I signed up to be on the build team, I think there's about 15 of us who hope to get the car running as a pure electric car by next Monday.

I had the airport shuttle driver drop me off right at the EVTV.me workshop around 3 PM.  I dropped my suitcase and backpack in the corner and dove in.  The guys already had the 3 cylinder gas engine and gas tank out and were prepping the electric motor and reduction gearbox to go in.  The Smart car is tiny and looks even smaller with the rear end pulled out.

At 7 PM the 7 of us went to Jack's house for Sunday dinner, BBQ chicken.  I've given myself permission to go off my healthy, vegetarian diet for this trip, so I enjoyed the meal and the conversation.  Jack wrote up his weekly blog entry after the dinner, and I got a special mention for making the big trip from Thailand.

I was nodding asleep at the table around 9 PM so I got a ride back to the hotel and crashed.  More updates from Day -1 to follow.