Welcome to Home Power Magazine readers

My article, titled "KEEPING TABS ON YOUR PV SYSTEM" has just been published in Home Power magazine, issue 139.

It's a survey of the products and technologies on the market for monitoring your home solar power and overall energy management, which fits in well with my job as the Monitoring Systems Engineer at REC Solar...  You can go to the magazine's web site at http://homepower.com to view sample issues or subscribe to the digital or print editions.

If you have questions about solar power or your monitoring options, I can probably steer you in the right direction!

A fully clean Transmission

Four sessions and around ten hours later, the transmission case is clean enough to eat off.  Compare the pictures here with the one I took when I pulled the transmission off the engine.  It was coated in grime and under the grime was some patchy black paint.  I don't think the paint is factory, so I went all the way down to fresh metal.  I bought two wire bristle wheels at Lowe's and used them in my cordless drill.  This was much more productive than the wire brush I used at the beginning.  I posted a question on the 914EV forum about how I should treat the finished product.  The consensus was to leave it bare or paint it silver metallic, so I sprayed with clear, hoping to avoid any oxidation and to set up a good base for the next time I want to clean.

Start of Final Paint!

I stopped in at Rainbow today to find they are working on the final paint.  They started by spraying the front trunk, passenger compartment, rear trunk, inside door panels and underside of the front and rear trunk lids.  They plan 4-5 coats here and then the exterior surfaces, followed by the clearcoat.  The color looks very deep and rich metallic gray, even in the poor shop lighting you see in the pictures below.

How much will it weigh? How fast will it accelerate?

I wanted to know the completed weight of the converted car to get an idea of the net extra weight from the electric kit minus the weight of the removed gasoline engine, starter motor, fuel tank, etc.

Shari at ElectroAuto says the completed car will weigh about 3300 pounds.  I'll have the car weighed at a local scale once the project is complete.

According to the car specs, it has a curb weight of 2139 pounds, which includes a full tank of fuel.  This means the electric kit is net 1161 pounds heavier.  The US-125XC batteries are 67 pounds each, for a total of 1340 pounds, plus 140 pounds for the electric motor.  Not counting small stuff, this means 319 pounds of original 914 parts are removed from the car.

1161 pounds represents a 54% increase in total weight, which is pretty dramatic.  Luckily the original 1.7 liter engine is pretty anemic, with a 0-60 mph time at 14.0 seconds.  Given the extreme torque of the electric motor I'm hoping to match or beat that.  My traveling needs trade off acceleration and top speed for distance, so I'll be happy to just get up to traffic speeds in a reasonable amount of time.  We'll find out soon.

Cleaning the Dirty Bits

While waiting through the delays getting the body and the electric kit parts, I've been working on cleaning the items I pulled off the car and will be re-installing in the early steps.  The motor mount bar was caked in 37 years of grime, so I power-washed it, scrubbed with degreaser, coated with de-rust fluid, primed, painted in satin black and clear coated.  It's now beautiful!

Next, I started to clean the transmission case.  It's full of nooks and crannies, crammed with grime and flaking paint.  I power-washed, and am halfway through cleaning with a toothbrush-sized wire brush and degreaser.  This is what I started with, second picture is half-complete.

Lastly, I worked on the driveshafts.  The trick is to keep water out of the gearing.  The shaft appears to be covered in a layer of plastic which is flaking away in some places but still holding tight in other places.  The first picture is as pulled off the car, second is ready to go back on.

Can't wait to get the body and the kit and get started!

Guide coat during priming is on

Rainbow sprayed what they call the Guide coat this week.  It's a light black mist sprayed over the primer to give guidance when doing the blocking sanding.  The sanding is complete when there are no black specks remaining.  This ensures a smooth surface, ready for any last-minute body filler or the start of the final paint coats.  Tom found the paint formula for "Porsche Meteor Metallic Gray" so we're getting very close!

ElectroAuto story on National Public Radio

A colleague driving home from work heard a story about Mike Brown and his work with electric cars on NPR (National Public Radio).  Of course it wasn't about me (but I can dream...), it was about the original electric car Mike Brown and his wife Shari at ElectroAuto, where I'm getting the electric kit for my 914 project.  I should be getting the call to come and pick up the kit within the next few weeks.

Here is the story, you should listen to the audio and read the text as they're not exactly the same.

Way to go Mike and Shari, getting the word out about electric conversion projects, as we approach the launch of several factory-made plug-in electric cars.

Buying the remaining conversion components

Since we're so close to getting the car back and getting the electric conversion kit, I'm ordering the final components I'll need in the conversion process.

First up is a great piece of kit, a replacement fusebox from JWest Engineering.  The original fusebox uses Good-And-Plenty shaped fuses that are held in place by a tiny amount of friction.  The new fusebox has modern blade fuses, and bolts directly in place of the original.  For only $105, it's a great product that brings the electrical system up to modern standards.

Next is the PakTrakr battery monitoring system.  As I've written before, I've chosen this product to monitor the battery pack and have written a custom application for my Droid phone to display the data generated by the PakTrakr in a graphical manner, while tracking real-time trip distance and remaining miles on the charge.

As I've also written before, I'm abandoning the spare-tire-air-pressure-windshield-washer system.  I spent many hours trying to retrofit a tiny electric switch where the washer fluid valve was mounted in the windshield wiper / blinker mechanism inside the steering column.  Trying to make a tiny yet strong custom bracket just wasn't working out, so I started searching around for a Porsche 924 mechanism, which includes the electric upgrade.  I grabbed one for $50 on eBay, which is a great deal.  As a bonus it looks like the horn contacts are in great shape too.

I ordered a strip of basketweave material for restoring the dashboard.  The dashboard in my car has been hacked over the years, so this should give a nice clean look.

In the near future I'll be buying a Kenwood KDC-BT945U stereo.  I've chosen this unit because it has a USB cable that I can connect to my Droid.  This will allow the stereo to play the songs stored in the phone, and keep it charged while driving.  It also has a Bluetooth connection to allow me to make hands-free calls, with the caller's voice coming through the speaker system.

Targa Top Restoration

The targa top came from the factory with a pebbly / textured surface, but the one that came with my car was chipped badly.  I decided to sand the texture off and take it down to the fiberglass, then have Rainbow paint it a smooth satin black.  The downside will be fingerprints and potential scratches as I take the top on and off.  I think it will be worth it in the end, modernizing the look in conjunction with painting the rollbar with the body color, rather than go back with the vinyl covering and chrome trim.

Here is the targa top in its original state and after I sanded the texturing off.  The trailing edge of the top has body filler on top of the fiberglass base.  I assume it came this way from the factory, but it could have been done after the fact.  Rainbow will do what they need to do, to get it in shape for painting.

First Primer Coat

I stopped in to Rainbow on Thursday to see that the first primer coat had been sprayed and they were in the process of filling and blocking the panels in preparation for the second primer coat.  Getting very close to the end now!