Back in the Saddle

April and May are the busiest months for my work followed closely by August and September. It is so easy for me to get discouraged about the project during these times because I just cannot spend time with ERX. This time of my life is probably not the greatest either since I have a teenager, a fairly new wife and a 21 month old toddler. This project has gone on for more than 3 years now. My wife and I are growing weary of it. Mostly my wife, but there have been many times I have almost thrown in the towel, and just about did at one point. But now that work has calmed down, I can see my family on a more regular basis, and there is some time to continue with the money pit, I mean, incredibly exciting electric car conversion project.

This last weekend I got in the garage again and did a little work, which got me more motivated to keep it going. The last thing I had done was run the charging wire from the rear of the car to the front where it will interconnect with the high voltage system. It would have made more sense to find space up front for the charger, but most of the space is in the rear, so that is where the charger ended up. I will connect to the charger with a regular AC plug through the fuel door. Anyways, I crimped some connectors on both ends of the 6AWG wire. The front connectors are just a ring terminal that will wire into my high voltage bus bars and the rear wires are now in an Anderson SB-50 connector. I could not easily access the fuel door yesterday because my neighbor has his Harley in the garage, so I moved onto another item that needed attention. I am installing a vacuum brake system for the power brakes. Some people just wire up a vacuum pump right up to the master cylinder and then when they hit the brakes the pump turns on, creates the vacuum and this allows the power brakes to easily stop the vehicle. There could be a very small delay between hitting the brakes and the pump turning on, so many people have added an extra vacuum canister to have a reservoir of vacuum. I had already mounted the bracket that came with the vacuum pump, but still needed a location and mount for the canister. I found a nice location near the pump and the master cylinder and just cut a small piece of angle iron to mount it on. I drilled the mounting holes for the canister, and that was all I could get done yesterday. I still need to drill a couple more holes for mounting it to the car, and then put a couple rivnuts in the car so I can bolt the bracket on. I should probably spray paint it as well.

This week I will be borrowing my neighbor's engine hoist, so hopefully this weekend I can pull the motor and see what broke in the tranny. I really hope it was just the key between the motor shaft and the coupler.