Some Front Wiring

Monday Evening, October 1, 2007

Continuing with the "burning the candle at both ends" theme, I was back at it after work. I completed the wiring in the middle compartment:


Here is the "spaghetti explosion" of wires coming into the front compartment (this will get cleaned up later):


I also assembled all three fan boxes - these prevent hydrogen from building up while the batteries charge:

Drilling New Holes

Monday Morning, October 1, 2007

After burning the midnight oil, I got up at the crack of dawn and did a little auto work before real work. First, my paint was dry on my rear trunk patch plate:


...so I installed it, with black silicone adhesive/sealant around the perimeter, and 1/4" 20 bolts holding it in:


I also drilled the holes between the gas tank compartment and the front luggage compartment, and installed grommets:


I drilled the hole for the air intake, and installed the vent cover:


I installed the gas tank exhaust outlet (not shown) and the front exhaust outlet (shown here):


And then I showered and went to work.

Gauge Wiring

Sunday, September 30, 2007

I've been a little remiss in blogging the past few days since I have been staying up all hours to work on the car (I want to drive it in the homecoming parade on Saturday...). On Sunday, I stayed up late and wired my gauges - here is a collage:


The lower right image is what it will look like under normal circumstances (well, not including the tach light).

Miscellaneous Sunday

Today was a day of miscellaneous things. First, though, a picture of my seats installed (as promised):


I finished up the wiring of the engine compartment relay board and started on the attachment of the high-voltage cabling:


I wired up the fuse panel with the three new wires and neatened up everything with tie-wraps. Also visible in this picture is the 3-in-1 wiring harness I will use to hook up my electronic speedometer:


And, finally, I prepared for installing the main high-current wires to the controller. I was never happy with the holes I had drilled in the trunk floor - the pilot bit of the hole saw ovaled out the pilot hole in the thin sheet metal, resulting in a very crappy hole - so I cut the whole mess out:

And fabricated a plate to cover the hole, with new holes cut using a 2x4 backing to prevent the pilot hole from ovaling out - makes for a much more precise cut. Here is the plate, dry-mounted in place:


I painted the plate, and it will dry overnight. Tomorrow - install it, finish high-current wires, and (hopefully) drill the last 4 holes (front air intake / exhaust outlet and 2 1" holes for cabling).

More Battery Racks

It may not look like much, but I got my fresh air blower installed. I'm going to add a Canev Electric Heater to the whole system eventually - but I'm going to get this beast on the road first. This represents probably 3-4 hours of work - possibly the hardest single item to finish on the whole darn car:


I also installed the front battery box rack:


And the middle battery box rack:


Not shown here (maybe I'll get some photos up later) but I got the seat surround, seats, emergency brake, and heater controls installed too. It's getting so close I can almost taste it. Next up, finishing the wiring (hopefully all in one day tomorrow...)

Working on the Seats

The joy of refurbishing the car at the same time as doing the conversion is discovering new issues that need fixing. The seats are one of those. One of the things I accomplished this weekend was to refurbish the seat mounting hardware (involved scraping old rusty paint off and repainting with POR-15):


and attaching my Camp 914 seat handles that I ordered a year ago:


Next up: finishing the backpad area - e-brake, dome light, seatbelts - and then installing the seats.

Stringing Cable

Another kind of "miscellaneous" weekend. I got the pedal cluster all hooked up (brake switch, clutch & throttle cables, floorboards, etc.). I tweaked a few other things. But the most photogenic thing was installing the main cable bundle. I started by following the instructions and trying to feed a heavy gauge wire through the heater tube. This did not work very well, so I pulled out my handy "plumber's friend" to do the initial stringing. Worked like a dream. Here's what my "friend" looks like:


Once that was through, I attached my pilot wire to the other end and pulled it out into the engine compartment:


I then hooked the pilot wire to the cable bundle and started pulling that through. Although the instructions recommend two people, I did not have much trouble doing it all by myself. The basic idea is to put a loop up above the feeding end so that the bundle is under compression (which makes it easier to pull from the other end):


You pull through from the other end, pulling about 6-8 inches at a time (and remembering to cut the masking tape off as appropriate as you pull it through). Here's the end of the cable bundle peeking through (the blue masking tape at the end covers the pilot wire which goes through the cable lug on the longest 2/0 cable):


And here is all the cable looped around in the engine compartment:


I also refurbished the seat mounts, but I'll wait until tomorrow morning to post pix of that (the paint needs to dry first :-)