Sunday, May 11, 2008

The Dreaded W's

May 4 – May 10, 2008

The dreaded W’s – weather and work. If April showers bring May flowers, what does it have to say about EV conversions? As stated earlier, I work on the car outside and when it rains, I stay inside. So as you can guess, it’s been a rainy week. As far as the other “W” goes, it’s the end of the school year and a time when the fancy of all young (teenage) hearts are looking to hanging out at the pool or trying to salvage their grade. Some are busy (makes me happy), while others are lazy. I could go on for pages about the current education system, but I will save it for another blog.

El Fiero received a little attention this week. First, I came up with a system (hopefully) to assemble the Warp9 to the transmission. It involves a short section of pipe, a couple of extra hands and a few of those choice words when things go wrong. I should have realized that something was going to be tough when I removed the ICE motor from the transmission. It required a crowbar and other tools of ICE destruction (TID’s). That ever critical alignment was an issue then and it carried over to the reassembly. As for my system, I get the motor near the spindle on the transmission while attached to the engine hoist. Next I take the pipe and put it under the adapter plate and bounce in up and down until the shaft and clutch align. Next I use those extra hands to slightly turn the CV shaft until the spline of the transmission shaft and clutch go together. On top of that, I also have a couple of clamps keeping light tension between the adapter plate and transmission so when all of the stars (and parts) align, everything just slides together. It’s not scientific, but it works. Once I got all of that figured out I finished the adapter to mount the motor to the frame (near the old ICE motor mount). Just to be on the safe side, I slotted the holes for both vertical and horizontal adjustments. Until I got this done, I figured there was going to be some movement in the whole assembly. But now the entire assembly is straight, level and more so, solid – I’m a happy guy. With all of that done, I took advantage of the best day of the week and brought everything home. I snagged a couple of students to help me load it into my truck and recruited the help of my loving wife to unload it at home. Now it sits on my back porch under a tarp awaiting another nice day to put it back in the car. I still have some wiring issues to take care of while the engine bay is empty, but I again am awaiting the rains to stop.

So until next week (3-4 days of rain predicted)….

No comments: