Fenders and Hood attached

I am posting these photos mainly for the CRX guys so they can see the fiberglass fenders installed on the car. The good news for the EV guys following this blog is I am pretty much ready for BAR inspection and registration. It actually looks like a real working car now with all my, not so elegant, wiring covered up by the hood.

The fenders are still raw and unpainted, but overall the fit is great. I need to file down the u-shaped mounting point on the right fender since it sticks out a bit. See the 5th picture below. The front alignment of the left fender is is wacky, but not due to the fender. My headlight, side marker and the cross bar are a little jacked up over there, so there is a bit of a gap and the side marker sticks out some. See the last picture.

Fenders, Hood, Front Grill

Front View

Right Fender

Right Fender - Front alignment

Right Fender - Rear alignment

Right Fender

Left Fender

Left Fender - Rear alignment

Left Fender

Left Fender - Front alignment

I need to call the DMV and/or the BAR referee to figure out what they inspect and get an appointment to get it inspected. Hopefully I can do that this week. I also need to get life insurance so my wife will feel better about the whole thing. I won't be working on the car next weekend, but should be back at it the weekend of the 26th.

Still many things to do once it is registered. Upgrade the rear springs. Upgrade the brakes. Add the vacuum braking system. Play with the controller settings. Install the meters. Clean everything up. Fix the leak in the windsheild. Look for any other leaks in the rear hatch area. Buy and install a lexan sheet to cover the rear battery boxes. Oh, I could keep going and going I guess.

Fenders

I got some time last Saturday to work on my new fiberglass fenders. Each fender needed 9 holes drilled and a bunch of filing to give each hole a little wiggle room and allow for some metal clips to be inserted on a couple. I started this a couple weeks ago and it is the first time I have worked with fiberglass. I got a facemask and goggles and made sure to wear gloves. The first fender took quite a bit of time as I was still figuring out the best way to do the job. I chipped a couple spots with the drill, so I will have to have those fixed, but I have a neighbor who is good with fiberglass. The first key is something I saw on youtube, which is to run the drill in reverse. I have metal drill bits, so they are probably not the right tool for the job, but running the drill in reverse worked great and made sure I went slow and steady. I used like an 1/8" bit to make some starter holes, and then went to a 1/4" or so to expand them out. Then took a round file to expand the hole in either direction a bit so there is some play if the holes don't line up perfectly.

 Here is one of the chipped spots. I was drilling the starter hole and it went through faster than I expected and the drill smashed down on the top edge of the fender. I learned to measure and drill on the backside to avoid this problem on later holes.

Crack in top edge

Here are a few shots of the fenders and the holes I drilled. Not perfect work, but it will do the job.

Back side of Sousa Speed Fender with a couple mouting holes drilled

Full Fender

Front side of Fender - Very smooth - still needs paint

 At the front of each fender is a spot where the side marker lights meet the fender and a couple mounting holes for the lights. This was the hardest part of the job as it required a bunch of filing to make the hole that the metal mounting clips go in. Here a couple shots of those holes.

In progress filing out the opening for the clip

Top view with a clip in

Front view with a clip in

There is a u shaped mounting slot near the doors and I am still working on those. The fiberglass seems a little thick there, so they are not sliding in easily and are not very flush with the pillar at the windshield. I think I can file the back down a bit more and that should help. I don't want to take off too much though and make it weak.

U shaped mounting point

I put the fenders on each side and most of the holes lined up pretty well. I have a few spots to file and get the alignment better as well as the u shaped mounts need to be filed down some more, but overall, the fit is great. Next weekend I will finish that last bit of filing and mount the fenders temporarily until I can get them painted. I'll take some photos of them on the car so you can see the fit. Once they are on and I get the hood on, I can go get the car inspected and registered and let the real testing of the car begin. There are alot of items left to finish still, but getting it registered is a huge step for me on this long journey.

Booty-licious

I ordered some cell terminal covers from EVTV. It is a nice little poly-something or other that fits over a string of terminals to keep hands, wrenches, etc. away from danger when working on the car or showing it to people. Jack Rickard of EVTV calls it cell booty. I made my order right after EVTV had finished their annual Electric Vehicle Converters Convention and it seemed my order got a little lost in the shuffle. I alerted them that I had not received it yet and they promptly next day aired it to me along with a little EVTV swag, which was very kind of them. They do understand customer service and are usually very prompt. Here are a few shots of the batteries with and without their booty.

Before -Rear Pack is Booty-less

After - These cells can now show off their new booty in public

Full Frontal coverage

As you can see, my battery pack is now decent and can make public appearances without all the photogs clamoring for one last pic of exposed terminals. The front battery rack on the firewall may need some special attention as the height of the cell booty may be too high for the hood, so once I get the hood back on, I will need to adjust the booty to get it to fit just right.

It was pretty hot last weekend, so I didn't spend too much time in the garage. However, I did hook the charger back up and also put my Kill-a-watt meter on the outlet to see how many AC amps my charger was pulling before tripping the breaker in the garage. It was drawing 14.25 amps continuous, a pretty sizable load. Then I ran some extension cord into the house to an outlet that I hoped was on a 20 amp breaker. Turned it on, and it started charging away. It did not trip a breaker, so that particular outlet is probably on a 20 amp breaker. The cells charged for about 40 minutes before I had to leave, so I did not get to see how they acted at the end of the charge.

Charger sitting in its future location but not installed yet

Hoping you can see the red charge light in this shot

I have not hooked up any metering in the car yet, so I have no idea how many amps are getting into the battery pack, but based on some rough calculations, I think the charger is delivering about 10amps at 150 volts to the pack. If the pack was completely dead, it would take about 17 hours to charge. I will only be using about 40% of the pack on my daily commute and I can charge at work, so it should take about 7 hours to get that 40% back into the car. I am usually at work for 9 hours or more a day, so this should work out well. Also, my work is planning on putting in some 240V level 2 chargers, so it may charge a little faster on those chargers. I will need to buy an adapter to connect my regular AC plug to the J1772 connector on the level 2 charger if I want to use it.

Next item to complete is drilling mounting holes in the new fenders and get them installed along with the hood. Then I need to get insurance and start the DMV inspection/registration process. There is still a bunch of other stuff to do after that, like upgrading the brakes and rear springs, but I really want to get it registered so I can test things out on the road without fear of getting ticketed or impounded for driving a non-op vehicle on the street.

Wired

I spent some time with ERX yesterday and got a few things done that were on my to do list to get the car registered. First, I had to fix the brake light wiring from the brake pedal sensor. The car was previously wired with a switch to disable the brake lights. Guessing some kids raced the car and wanted to go lights out if they had to avoid the fuzz. Did a little continuity testing to find the right ends of the wires and added some terminals. All good. One minor issue lingering which is the 3rd light on the hatch window. I will investigate that one later.

Second, I delved into the wiring for the horn. The horn is not stock and I was not sure if it worked. I don't recall testing that when I bought the car. I found the original wiring, hooked it up and it did not work. Then I took the steering whell off and found the connector to the horn was not attached. Connected it and it worked, so I am now making some good progress.

Next up was the windshield wipers. The switch on the stock does not appear to work so the previous owner wired up a basic on/off switch on the dash with some zip cord and electrical tape. Crude, but it worked. I wanted to fix the wiring and also add a 3 position switch so I at least have low speed and high speed. Found a 3 way switch at Pep Boys and ran some wires into the dash. Luckily the original main power wire with its fuse still worked, so I only needed to wire the switch and lo and high wires to ground. I found a bolt I thought would work and wired it, but was not getting a good ground contact, so I found another bolt and that one worked great. Now I have Wipers.

These were the three main tasks for the day and it took me most of the day to do it due to figuring out what was working and what wasn't and then performing Cirque du Soleil moves under the steering wheel and dashboard to find the right wires and add the terminals. It was 90+ degrees outside and 100+ in the garage, so I sweated off a few pounds. I am definitely sore today from contorting my body in so many different ways.

I had a an hour or so left at the end, so I thought I would hook up the charger and test out that system. It seemed to work until I clicked the garage door opener and tripped the breaker. Apparently the house lights and the garage power are on the same circuit. Not sure how many amps the circuit is since it is a very old style four switch sub-panel. The panel says the entire panel shouldn't exceed 70 amps, so maybe each switch can do 17.5 amps? I reset the switch and tried a couple more times, but I kept tripping it. I know my charger outputs only about 8amps DC at about 158V, but not sure what the AC draw is. The model I purchased originally was a PFC 2000+ which is supposed to be a 2kW charger, but the recent algorithm change I had done, the technician scratched out the 2kW and wrote in 2.5kW, so maybe the hardware can handle the 2.5kW and he just updated the software to that amount. I guess I need to get an ammeter and see what kind of AC current it is drawing. The spec sheet says 15 amps AC maximum, 12 amps RMS.

So, next stop is drilling some mounting holes in the new fiberglass fenders, removing the clutch pedal and cable, and putting the hood and front bezel back on. I should be able to get the car registered after that. Once it is registered, then I will have the rear springs upgraded and start the work on the larger front brakes and the vacuum braking system.

It's Alive Again

I had a couple hours available yesterday and I finished hooking up the control board and reset the controller to its initial settings. Gave it a few spins while on the jack stands and all was well, so I got the car down and went for a spin. Motor and Tranny are working well so far. I took a few drives down the street, then went around the block and then around a couple blocks. I tried 1st, 2nd, and 3rd as well as shifting while driving which takes a couple seconds without a clutch, but it works well and if I need to get up to speed quickly, 1st is quite useful. The most important thing is no noises from the tranny.

So, back to focusing on a couple items that will allow me to get it registered so I can test it more on the street without fear of being ticketed. Brake light switch needs to be re-wired, and the wind shield wipers need to be re-wired. I will also be working on the power vacuum brake system as well as upgrading the front brakes to Acura Integra rotors and calipers which are bigger, but fit my car. The bigger brakes and the vacuum system together will give me some great stopping power. The rear springs need to be swapped to Integra springs to get a bit higher ride height since the batteries in the back are much heavier than the origianl gas tank.

That's it for now. I am pretty excited that the coupler, new input shaft bearing in the tranny and the motor mount are working well and the car is able to move again.

Motor mounted, noises gone (w/pics and video)

I put the last coat of paint on the motor mount bracket last night and had some time this afternoon to get it installed. Here are a couple shots of the bracket and a couple of it installed.

Motor Mount bracket

Other side of bracket

Bracket installed and motor is secure

Better shot of rubber motor mount and bracket

I removed the jack holding up the motor and the bracket worked great. It barely moved down and I can grab it and shake it and it is all solid. I hooked up the motor to a couple batteries to test it all out and here are the results.

Hopefully this will be the last of the drivetrain issues and I can move on to the power braking system and a couple more items standing in my way of getting the vehicle registered.

Tranny fix and Motor Mount

We discovered in my last post I could not change gears after fixing the input shaft bearing on the transmission. A couple weeks ago I loosened the three detent bolts which hold ball bearings against the shift shafts. It turns out I had tightened these bolts too much and could not budge the shifter. Once loose, I could freely shift into any gear. I tightened them back up to 16 ft/lbs per the manual and all is good. Tested the motor/tranny and everything seemed fine until the last couple times I spun up the motor, I heard a high pitch cyclical noise which sounded like something just barely rubbing somewhere. Oh no, not again.

Took the motor out again and spun it up. All is good. Hooked up a drill to the transmission shaft and it spun nicely. No Noise, so it must be in the coupling or the motor mount tweaking the motor a bit. Put the motor back in and held it there with a jack and all was good, so the thought is the motor mount. The mount was a two piece circular mount that goes around the motor and is held together with a couple large bolts and nuts. It is then attached to the existing rubber motor mount with a bracket my friend James made from 1" angle iron. The fit was never perfect, but I didn't think it would cause a problem. It had a bit of an angle that did not match the circular mount on the motor, so when the big bolts were tightened down, I think the motor alignment was tweaked a bit.

I decided to make a new mount and checked out some other CRX builds online. One guy used an L-shaped bracket that came off his garage door, and he just bolted it to the end of his motor and welded the other end to some metal that attached to the rubber motor mount. So I thought, that sounds pretty simple. I have some extra 1" angle iron and my neighbor can weld, so maybe I can do something simple with the angle iron.

Long story short, it works beautifully. One piece bolted to the motor, one piece running vertically up to the last piece attached horizontally to the rubber motor mount. It took us a bit to get the angles and lengths of each piece right, but it looks great and works well. We added a couple more pieces of straight metal to stiffen the whole structure and it is in the process of being painted. One more coat and I will install it in the car. I hope to take a photo of it this weekend and also take a shot of it installed in the car. It is lighter than the previous piece and is out of the way of some of my other components.

After it is installed, I will test the motor and tranny for a bit and make sure all the gears run well and the motor is spinning freely with no noises. I may then put the control board back in and take the car on the road to check it out. I still have to adjust the controller back to the original settings so as not to jerk the transmission around with the last settings I had in there. On the other hand, I may hold off on that and work on setting up the power vacuum brake system. We'll see how I feel. I think testing the car on the road is more exciting and may draw my attention more than wiring and hoses on the brake system.