This project was officially started on November 7th, 2007 when I purchased the car from an individual in Rowlett, TX and had it towed home. Below I will be keeping a tally of exactly how much money is spent on the project and how much time. Hopefully this will be a resource to others interested in such a project.

5-18-2008 -Finally got the front battery charger installed. Now the car can completely charge everything just by plugging in at the charging port. In many ways this marks a milestone of completion and is where many EV hobbiests would stop and say theirs is complete. I still have a few more things to do before I will call it complete, though. I also took mine to the Kennedale Kar Show yesterday and my car has been featured on both Channel 8 and Channel 5 news.

5-12-2008 - I have been driving the car to work for the past 3 work-days, and taking it pretty much everywhere I can drive it, such as going out to eat, going to the grocery store, driving Hailey to daycare. So far it is holding up great and seems like it is going to be a reliable daily driver. It was featured on WFAA.COM as a news story a few days ago (I need to put a link to that somehwere here!)

5-7-2008 - The car is up and running. It is working better than ever. No more resets, plus the engine mounts are much better now. Everything under the hood is painted. I still can't drive in the rain until I get the splash guards and a few leaks fixed. Otherwise, this car is ready for daily driving. I will still be working on the power steering and brakes too.

5-2-2008 - The controller came in today. However, I won't be able to test it right away as I still don't have everything back together. One problem I ran into was that I had constructed those motor mounts with bad bushings. Now that I have good bushings, they don't fit right. So I had to saw off several parts and re-weld them in the correct places. The good news is, when all is finished, it should fit very snug. Hopefully I'll have it all back together this weekend.

4-29-2008 - The car is currently non operational and hasn't been for weeks. I sent the controller back to the manufacturer and I'm currently waiting on a replacement. In the meantime, I decided to tear everything out from under the hood and rework some of the motor mounts and other things. Pretty much everything needed to be painted. I'm also working on designing better ways to route the spaghetti of wires under there. I hope to have it all back together and running in time for the Kennedale Auto Show in mid May. It should look considerably more presentable under the hood when I get everything back together.

4-8-2008 - Been working on the battery chargers. I have the rear one mounted and brackets partially finished on the front. I discovered the horn actually does work. It just only works when the ignition is turned on. Strange. I have anew taillight en route that should be here tommorow. After which, I will get the car inspected (or attempt to get it inspected) And very soon I should be able to charge the batteries by plugging into the charging port instead of opening the hood and cargo hatch.

4-2-2008 - Got the car up and running again today with the new screens. The temp screens aren't working quite right, though. Took a trip to Wal-Mart to get some groceries. Although it did all fit in the car, it would have been a lot easier if I had some trunk space! :-)

3-31-2008 - I got in the new voltage screen, but I'm still waiting for the Dc-DC converter before I can re-assemble the dash. I fixed the headliner in the car with staples. I figured that would keep it of my head until I get it professionally fixed. However, it really doesn't look half bad now. I also scored a new taillight off of ebay for $4.99. That means I only have one thing left that would fail inspection - the horn. Gotta get that fixed!

3-25-2008 - I got 3 more tires from somebody off of craigslist that are almost brand new. I only needed 2 but now I have a spare, I guess. I also fried my instrument panel. I accidently touched the positive lead on the motor to the car's chassis when test fitting a piece of equipment into the car. I didn't realize the 72V system was grounded to the vehicle chassis via the instrument panel (I"ve tried to keep the two systems isolated) so something sparked, and the instrument panel no longer works. I'm going to have to dig it apart and figure out where the problem is.

3-22-2008 - Windshield has been replaced, got state registration sticker on there. Hopefully an inspection will follow soon. Put vinyl lettering on back bumper, and "72 volt" on the side whre the "16V DOHC" sticker used to be. Been doing some range testing. It is appearing to be right on track with original estimates, that I can do 14 miles to 50% discharge, and around 20 miles down to 80% dishcarge. My my daily driving target would be the 50%.

3-19-2008 - Got the new instrument panel installed and working, except for a few bugs. One problem is that when I press the accellerator pedal, the paktrakr starts scrolling through menus. This is due to a cable shielding problem. I'm going to either add some better pull-up resistors and/or cable shielding in an attempt to fix this.

3-17-2008 - I now have the rear-seats and all of the trim-work back in the car, so the car looks more normal now. I also installed the digital instrument panel I've been working on for weeks. I now have lots of vehicle information right in front of me, which will help diagnose certain issues. I am still having an issue with the controller resetting on me. I think at this point i'm looking to buy a new controller from Alltrax or Curtis.

2-27-2008 - Last night I installed a stereo system. The previous owner had removed the rear 6x9 speakers completely, in favor of some boom box that was in the rear. So before I put all those trim panels back on, I figured I should put some speakers in there. Then I figured, what the heck.. might as well buy a head unit too, since it didn't have one of those either. I got one that does MP3 from an SD card or USB stick. It sounds really nice, actually better than my regular gas car.

2-25-2008 - I finally finished the rear battery racks. Now it is time to start putting the rear seat and all the trim panels back into the car. I also got some more wires run through the main conduit for the battery monitoring system and for the front battery charger. I also got two new tires on it last week. It is getting much closer to being a "daily driver"

2-09-2008 - Did some test-drives today using the paktrakr and its battery guage and current sensor. I climbed that really steep hill on Sublett and never pulled more than 280 amps. (which suggests maybe my controller isn't pulling 600 amps as it is supposed to) but I had a running start this time so I was able to stay close to 30 mph until I hit the steepest part near the top. I also took it out on the access road to the highway and did a top-speed test. I got it up to 54 mph and that is where it topped out.

2-04-2008 - I spent all weekend working on the undercarraige power conduit. Now the hood is back on with the cables routed under the car. I can drive around town and do testing now without being noticed as much. I drove it down to Kennedale park during broad daylight.

2-01-2008 - I tried the hill on Treepoint again in 4th gear and was able to maintain 30 mph. I've decided to move ahead with the project for now, and if I have to upgrade the motor later then I will. But at the moment I'm going to concentrate on things that need to be done regardless of the motor. I've taken all 6 batteries out of the rear (nearly kills me to do this with those 62-pound monsters) and put the car on jackstands. This weekend my only goal will be to install a plastic conduit from the spare-tire well, down through the exhaust channel, and into the engine bay. This is where the power cables will run. This will allow me to get the hood re-attached and the windows rolled up for further testing. Once the conduit is done, I'll get back to work on the power steering and power brakes as I have all the parts neccessary for both items now, just have to build brackets for them and wire them up.

1-29-2008 - Seth and I took the car on a 6-mile Journey a few days ago. It did okay on most streets, with the only real problem being that really steep hill on Sublett rd. We couldn't get the car over 18 mph until we reached the top. I've been looking into the problem to see what I'll need to change to get more power. One suggestion I've heard from multiple different people is that I should have up-shifted to a higher gear. That sounds crazy because in a gasoline car, you would down-shift for more power. Appearently an electric motor has more power at lower RPM, so up-shifting is what I should have done. I'm skeptical as to whether it will help or not. But there may be some truth to that as I was climbing the hill in 3rd gear and I tried downshifting to 2nd. When I did that, the car started rapidly loosing speed. So I shifted back to 3rd and was able to maintain speed. I thougt that was weird, but it never occurred to me to try 4th or 5th gear. I haven't had a chance to check that out yet and the car isn't ready for another test drive yet. One good thing, from what preliminary results I have from my test-drives, I don't think range is going to be a problem for me since I essentially drove the car 12 miles over a period of several days and I still had 80% charge left. Also, charging the batteries only took 3 hours so even if it were totally discharged, I should be able to charge overnight. So there is some good and bad news.

1-26-2008 - Today was the moment of truth when I finally got it running on 72 volts. Unfortunatly, I was strongly disappointed with the performance of the car. I couldn't get it over about 25 miles per hour when going up some of the hills in the area, but I did get it over 40 mph downhill. I could have gone faster but I was breaking the speed limit already. So now I have to start investigating what I am going to need to do in order to get more power. The three main suspects are the small motor I am using, the controller, or maybe the system voltage. But I am not sure the voltage is culprit since I didn't really notice much difference in power from 48V to 72 volts.

1-24-2008 - I have been getting a lot done lately, despite the fact it has been freezing temperatures for weeks now and I've had bad allergies too. I was very impressed with my own work after I sanded down the front battery rack and painted it. I also sanded down the areas inside the car where I had welded to the frame and repainted those. It looks very nice. I have removed all the trim panels inside the rear area of the car, along with the back seats. I needed to do this in order to have access to the areas I needed to weld to. I just hope I remember how it all goes back in. I should have enough of the battery rack built to do a test drive this weekend with 56 Volts. It may be another week or two before I can test with 72 volts.

1-14-2008 - The moment finally came today that I've been dreaming about for months. I drove the car down the road under its own power. In fact, this is probably the first time this car has driven under its own power in years. Granted, with only 3 golf-cart batteries installed, I couldn't get more than about 5 miles per hour out of it. And the brake rotors are still covered in rust so they make this grinding noise, which is the only noise one can hear from the car as it is driving. I'm definatly going to need power steering. It is tough to turn sharp turns at slow speeds. Also the brakes are very stiff. So I'll be installing those things soon.

1-09-2008 - I went to downtown Fort Worth today to pick up 3 of the Trojan T875 batteries. I started building racks for them and I've nearly killed myself by constantly picking up and moving these 65 pound monsters. Unfortunatly, I need to constantly test the rack to make sure each little section is correct before I weld it. Eventually I made a makeshift handle for one of them out of some rope, which made it much easier to pick up.

1-06-2008 - I spent nearly the entire day designing, building, and installing the first rack inside the hood. This one holds the 12V accessory battery and all of the other accessories like the motor controller, vacuum pump, power steering, and battery chargers.

1-05-2008 - Finished the rear torsional mount, and moved the engine hoist out of the way. I also put the tires back on and (while still on jack-stands) hooked the motor to a 12V battery to watch the tires spin.

12-30-2007 - Finished building the front torsional motor mount. I'm very happy with the design.

12-20-2007 - I have part of the motor mounts finished and the motor and transmission are now suspended in the car without the help of the engine hoist. However, the torsional mounts aren't finished yet, so I couldn't actually apply much power to the motor yet. I also have begun to cut open all of the original OEM wire-harnesses to remove all the excess wires and connectors under the hood, yet keep the wires and connectors that I will need.

12-11-2007 - I now have all the metal I need for building motor mounts and battery boxes. However, my welder was giving me fits so I had to go buy a new one. I was making good progress on Saturday but on Sunday the weather turned very cold and I prefer to weld outside. So it appears the motor mounts won't be done for another week.

12-4-2007 - Seth and I put the transmission back into the car and mounted it up. The electric motor is hanging from the engine hoist. It has no mounts yet. However, we did spin it up with the 12V battery and the wheels turned. So now I need to build 3 motor mounts this week.

12-2-2007 - Got the adapter plate finished and the motor mounted to the transmission. I gave it 12V just to see if everything spins, and it does. I lowered the two of them back into the car so I can start building some motor-mounts.

11-23-2007 - I bought some hatchback lift support (gas shocks) from Autozone to fix the problem that the hatch will not stay up without holding it. After two hours of installation, I discovered they don't work any better than the ones I replaced. So now I get to go spend another hour or so removing them so I can take them back to Autozone.

11-21-2007 - Barry came over today and traced the transmission out on a plate of steel and took it back with him. I also got a visit from Joachim, an NTEAA member who wanted to see how the project was comming along. My plate should be done this weekend. Also, Jack had sent me home with his dial-caliper so that I could take measurements of the shaft of my electric motor down to the thousands of an inch. He is making my coupler this weekend too. So if all goes well, next weekend I'll have the motor and transmission mounted back in the car.

11-13-2007 - Went down to the tax office today to get the title transferred. They taxed me on nearly $2,000 because they said that is what the car is worth. That is just daylight robber by the government. I did get new plates and a new windhsield sticker.

11-12-2007 - Went battery shopping, came home disappointed. Bought a battery charger for the 12V system. Removed some window tint with the "trash bag" method.

11-12-2007 - Removed all of the gas components yesterday. Placed order for electric motor.

11-07-2007 - After looking at many cars, I finally picked this one. It was delivered to my driveway around midnight. The car is far from perfect condition. Just to name a few things, the headliner is sagging, the window tint is peeling off, some weather stripping is falling off, the front bumper has a crack in it, the windshield has a crack in it, one tire is flat, another one is slick bald, two of the wheels have bent places where they have probably hit curbs or potholes but it isn't serious, the stereo is missing, one of the doors looks slightly bent as if somebody broke in, and several of the interior plastic panels in the rear of the vehicle are undone because somebody had been messing with aftermarket stereo equipment. On the good side, the suspension is good, the car has never had any serious accidents or flooding, the body is in good shape, all of the power equipment works, the paint is in good shape for its age, and there is nothing wrong with the vehicle that isn't fixable. I will likely not be spending any money on most of that kind of thing until the car is actually driving on electric power.

To email david, use this address: Sorry for using an image, but it keeps the spam robots away.
Back to David's main website