DC Power Harness

The next major step is to build the high-voltage DC harness that brings power from the front batteries, through the circuit breaker and then to the contactor and on to the controller.

ElectroAuto has you measure two 2/0 welding cable, plus a 10 ga ground wire and a 4-conductor signal cable, then tape everything together at the proper offsets.

The instructions provided a convoluted set of steps using "mechanic's wire" to prep for pulling the cabling through the heater duct, and you need an assistant to do the cable pull.  I decided to use my fishtape, and it was easy to do by myself.  Here you see the fishtape running into the heater duct from the rear of the car to the front.

The tip of the fishtape sticks up out of the hole just below the fuse block.

I put the end of the fishtape through the lug hold, then strapped it into place with a ziptie.

I then wrapped it in tape to make for a smooth pull.

At the end of the pull, you want a tape marker to just be coming out of the heater tube in the engine compartment.

And this is the other end, with the cable waiting to be bolted to the circuit breaker.  I'll have to do some minor pull adjustments to get enough cable.

After finishing the prep, I put the "CA Plug" in place, and used the same silicon as for the saddlebag battery rack.  The CA Plug is slightly angled so it didn't want to stay in place.  I helped it by sticking a screwdriver in as a wedge.

One small complication due to my use of the weatherproof enclosure.  The end of this cable bolts to the contactor but the lug is about 1/16" too wide to get through the weatherproof gland nut.  My solution was to grind just enough off to get it to fit through.  Unfortunately I forgot to do the grinding before I pulled the cable, so the grinding occurred on the ground under the back of the car.

Final connections on each end happen in later steps.

Finishing the Potbox

Previously I had mounted the potbox unit inside the weatherproof enclosure and mounted it.  To complete the job, I had to run the potbox signal cable to the controller and the potbox microswitch.  Here you see everything in place, running through a weatherproof cable gland nut to split-loom, and the clear cover on and screwed down tight.  Then you can see the wiring landed on the controller.

Fuse Block Conversion

Another of the evidence of 37 year-old technology in the car is the fuse block.  It uses Good-And-Plenty sized glass fuses that are held in place by heavily oxidized and dirty copper spring contacts.  Electrical system glitches waiting to happen.  I bought a modern, swap-in replacement from J West Engineering, and here are the steps to swap it out.

Here's the original, disconnected from the underside of the dashboard.  You can see the spring clips.

And here is the top.  You can see the round relays, along with a bit of dirt..

Here's the J West replacement.  It's shaped as a bolt-in replacement, but uses modern fuses.  It also comes with nice fuse labels, for each 914 model year.

Here I'm swapping wires from the old fuse block to the new one, one wire at a time to avoid problems.  I removed a bunch of the cloth tape to give more wire access.  This cloth tape has given its life.  I plan to remove it all throughout the car and replace it with split-loom cable protector.

Here's the completed swapover.

I then moved the relay bases over to the new unit.

I bought all new relays right at the start of the project, so in they go.

And here it is mounted back into its proper place.  I've placed an order for a second fuse block and will mount it under the dashboard too, to provide fuses for new electrical devices in the car such as the stereo (switched and unswitched), Droid charger, GoPro video camera charger, windshield washer pump motor and eventually heating and cooling systems.

The one downside of the unit is it doesn't have bars across multiple input terminals like the factory one, you have to make up little jumpers which is OK, but not optimal.

Edit: I have been notified that there are indeed bridged terminals built into the unit, I will investigate later.

Rear Battery Rack

I blasted through a lot of work this week, so I'm going to make a small post for each area.  This one is on the finishing the rear (engine compartment) battery rack.

Alert readers will remember my pain of trying to fit the rack into the space.  I had to cut out the engine cover latch and a couple of trays.  The hell-hole didn't start out too bad, but it wasn't completely dealt with by the body shop and rust kept percolating through the paint.  I tried rust-converter and it helped but not completely.  I then went to the POR-15 and painted the whole engine compartment.  It both halted the rust and added to the black motif.  It also covered the scratched paint from all of the times I tried to put the rack in and pull it out again.

Here's the rack support sticking up, waiting for the rack.

You can see the rack is bumping against the semi-vertical brace on the side of the engine compartment.  I've seen others grind the rack away just enough, but I just finished pounding out the firewall, so several carefully placed hits and a grinder to smooth it, the rack had enough clearance.

On the passenger side, there is a triangular plate, which I cut away, leaving enough clearance.

And viola!  The rack is home for the first time in a test fit.  I was surprised by how tight it fit - there's only a few millimeters from the back of the rack to the front of the transmission adapter, and again only a few millimeters between the top of the motor and the bottom of the rack.

Here's where the triangular plate was, after I removed it and ground everything smooth.

And this is the driver's side where I pounded it, then ground everything smooth.

These shots are after the POR-15 treatment.

And now the rack is back in place and ready to bolt to the vertical supports and the metal sheet behind the seats.

And here is how tight the clearance is between the rack and the motor adapter plate.  Just a tiny bit of daylight.

Of course I tried to fit in the battery boxes, but they need a little bit of trimming on the plastic edges.  I'll save that until later.

Signed up for the EVTV Electric Vehicle Conversion Convention

I've been watching hundreds of hours of video of the EVTV electric conversion guys, and just tonight signed up to go to the first electric car builder convention just outside St. Louis in September.  Check out the itinerary, speakers and expected cars.

It turns out an old colleague of mine at IBM Austin, Fred Behning, is working on an electric conversion of his Bugeye Sprite and will be at the convention too.

A flurry of Work - Wipers, Ventilation and Washers

Well it's the 4th of July weekend here and that means I get Monday off for the holiday.  I decided to take Tuesday through Friday off, giving myself a 9 day vacation.  I intended to really bang through a lot of work on the car and so far it's working out well.  The only downside is it's the hottest week of the year, starting at 112F on Friday, slowly dropping to a peak of 96F today.  The car is under a carport on the east side of my workshop building, so it's out of the direct sun, but it still gets very, very hot.  I'm starting early in the morning and staying hydrated, no problems so far.

With the former-fuel tank area successfully reshaped for the battery box, I had to restore and reinstall everything that goes in under the cowl.  Starting in deep and working my way out, I installed the windshield wiper mechanism.  After cleaning, it went in pretty smoothly.  Of course I forgot to take a picture of the control connector during the teardown, but a quick Google search found this great picture on the Pelican Parts forum.

With that in place, I cleaned and reinstalled the central airbox and driver and passenger flapper units, installed the hoses and attached the control cables.  Warning: this is a non-trivial process.  I used a combination of two tutorials on 914 World, an expansion and clarification of the tutorial by Chuckles McGroover (probably not his real name...) on his highly-detailed conversion blog, and the Haynes manual.  My sincere thanks to everyone for their pioneering work in this tricky area.

First I installed the defroster vents.  The original foam gaskets had turned to powder, so I used weatherproofing strips around the edge.  The tricky part came to sticking them through the holes in the metal at the top of the dashboard - the foam would catch and not go through smoothly.  I ended up gently scotch-taping some paper around the foam strips, slid them through the holes and gently pulled the paper out.

I then prepped the air blower box.  When I did the teardown, I found years worth of dirt, leaves and unidentifiable crap inside.  I decided to follow web advice and put a piece of screening material over the top of the box.  My first attempt to hold it in place was with a couple of long zip-ties, but the area is *very* tight and they wouldn't fit and ended up popping off anyway.

The working solution was to epoxy the screening around the edge of the box.  A fairly permanent solution, but I don't intend to be replacing it anytime soon.

Installation was a *major* pain, as it is so tight, right-to-left between the two mounting brackets.  I ended up loosening the upright brackets holding the top of the cowl to the shelf of the firewall.  It was just enough to force it into place and get the two screws started.

I then followed the tutorials to attach the control cables, and mounted the flapper units, then ran some new flexible hose where it needed to go.  So here is the complete job, starting with a wide view, then panning from driver's side to passenger.  I like the black motif.

Finally I worked on replacing the spare-tire-pressure windshield washer system with a small electric pump.  I ran the wires long and fed them through the hole where the washer hose went up into the steering column's valve, and will replace it with the 944 electric control I bought a long time ago.  I bought a new set of squirter nozzles since the rubber on the originals was in rough shape where it fits into the hole in the cowl.

Coming up in the next entry - the engine bay battery box goes in!

My Last Shipment from Electro Auto?

Today is July 2, 2011 and I think I just got my last shipment from Electro Automotive!  Well I am actually waiting for two final things but I don't know that I'll ever get them.

The final part I am waiting for is the pair of engine cover hold-down pins, but I don't intend to use them so I don't care if they don't show up.

Now, the real final, final part I'm waiting for is the "Motor Field Bus Bar", a copper bar wrapped in heat shrink tubing that mounts between two of the studs on the electric motor.  This part is not specifically called out on the parts list on the invoice, but as I was wiring up the motor I discovered it was missing.  I emailed Shari about the missing part on May 3, almost 2 months ago.  To my utter lack of surprise, I didn't even get a response.  If it shows up before I need to energize the motor, great.  Otherwise I'll build one myself out of copper bars.

I feel a great weight lifted off my shoulders, that I'm no longer subject to the whims of EAs finances, staff or suppliers.  Woo hoo!  To paraphrase Obi-Wan Kenobi: "I felt a great awakening in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in joy and were seen driving their electric cars. I believe something wonderful has happened."

Rusty Metal Fixup - Pedal Assembly and Brake Fluid Reservoir Bracket

I was watching a weekend car build/repair show and they talked about this stuff called Metal Rescue.  It's supposed to remove rust from metal parts, bringing it back down to nice metal.  This is different from the rust restorer products which convert and encapsulate the rust into a hard black compound.  I figured it was worth a try because the pedal assembly was a rusty mess.

I bought it in a gallon jug from Summit Racing.  It was significantly cheaper than buying directly from the manufacturer web site.

This is what the pedal assembly looked like at the start.  You can see how hard it would be to sand away all of the rust while assembled, or even after it's torn apart, which is hard to do since some of the parts stay on for good from the factory.

The instructions say to completely immerse the metal in the solution, so I used a 5 gallon bucket.  It wasn't converting quickly so I just left it overnight and checked it in the morning.  It's a pretty interesting product - no toxins, no VOC, water-based.  You just keep using the same solution over and over until it's totally black and won't take off any more rust.

And here's how it looked when I pulled it out.  Excellent results with just some dirt and original paint flecks!

And here is what the solution in the bucket looked like:

I then primed, painted and clear coated the assembly, so I'll be ready to reinstall it at the right time.

The next rusty thing I tried was the brake fluid reservoir bracket.  It's a small piece of shaped metal to hold the reservoir onto its bracket in the cowl area.  Here is what it looked like as it went through the process in a small paint pail.  I decided to put the whole thing into a ziplock bag to see the extent of evaporation.

It removed the rust well, leaving just a bit of original paint.

And this is what the solution looked like afterward.  Yuk!  Liquid rust.

Here's what the bracket looks like back in place after sanding, priming, painting and clearcoating.

I poured all of the solution back into the original container and it went nearly back up to its original level, and was a weak tea color so I think it still has a lot of life left in it.