Running

As some of you know the car has been running and I'm going to try to get this to a real time - so here goes.

I had a bad potbox, here is the the replacement ready to go in. The extra piece of aluminum is because I couldn't mount the potbox as the instructions because the brake regulator is in a different location. The neutral relay was bad and needed to be replaced. The second relay for the charger also was bad and like Tim K. I didn't use it. I intend to go back and replace it but it's not a problem right now.

The motor ran about 30 RPM full throttle. After a couple of emails with Beth @ Azure and switching the encoder direction the car was up. The first test drive was poor. I turned around and changed the parameters that Ross posted on his blog. The cars performance still is poor but I drove it to work a couple of times ( 7 miles each way ) and was working with Beth trying to get the car to keep up with traffic, when I had a battery terminal melt. The lead melted around the bolt that was cast in the terminal. The store claims the terminal was not tighted and I believe the lead broke off with the bolt. I will post pictures next time of the repair.

The problem with the lack of power seems to be the controller cuts the voltage allowed when the voltage in the pack goes down to 138 volts. The battery pack completely charged will drop the first time it is floored to 133 volts. Beth said this is done to get the most out of the pack and based on 12 volt batteries. I didn't see this parameter and asked here to send me a new .ccs file that includes this and the one Tim used to hook up his tach. I'm goig to use one of the regen wires the go to the cabin and hook it to the tach rather the find the wire in the engine compartment. I'm thinking I can move the pin at the controller and crimp a connector--done.

brakes

The brakes were upgraded to the 911 master cylinder and BMW calipers. Here the caliper is being cut to size.
Painted and installed with new disc. One note make sure the caliper is not already the 19 mm master cylinder like mine was!

conversion part 2

The controller and bushings installed.
The engine wiring done after Tim helped me figure out the problem with the AC instructions. The brown is dust from the sanding primer and will wash off. The relays have the stickers from the bags on them so I don't mix them up. The shunt is above out of view.
The transmission had a lot of oxidation so I scuffed it with scotch brite, cleaned it with brake clean and painted it with Aluminum cast high temp.
Installed!
The front batteries installed and wired up. Two thing to note; the batteries have no posts and I believe this works better. The other is the bitchin prop for the charger.

Conversion

This what Christmas looked like in July. I placed my order in May. I was on vacation when it came. A friend of mine tucked it in my garage untill I came home.

When this came I still had to paint the main body then the trunks to put in the battery boxes but I could wire the engine compartment and the motor/controller will be here in a couple of weeks.

The instructions for the AC kit are sent email. If you don't have Microsoft word you will need to convert the file to PDF. The diagrams showing the connections will not show in word pad. Tim K. was able to help me figure out the problem when I was unable to get help from Electro. Thanks Tim.

The pipe and the big hammer method on the firewall in the instructions for the middle battery box became the sawsall and mig welder on my car. I like my way better but I missed the photo op like Tim and mirror the picture in the instructions.The middle battery box had one of the battery hold down "buttons" in the wrong spot (the one on the left).The "button" is cut off with my trusty sawsall........and reglued with JB weld.The fan mounting threaded inserts weren't installed. I found some for thicker material and after drilling the holes bigger installed them.After grinding them flush I'm glad the fan covers up the mess. In late August the adapter for the motor came. The motor and controller came the month before so we can put the motor and transmision together.The motor mount holes don't line up and need to be elongated to work.New clutch kit and resurfaced flywheel. At this point all the bolts are bought because the hardware kit and several other "hardware store" items are not here that are included in the kit. The customer service part of Electro Automotive is shit. The AC kit is new and the issues with that I can deal with like the instructions being sent in a format that won't open on 50% of the computers and pieces called for not in the kit ( the controller/motor and high current wire hanger or regen switch) but they don't reply to emails about questions about them and much of the basic stuff was not received at this point. They use the phone to screen calls and don't reply to emails, you don't talk to them unless they want to.

controller plate and paint

The controller plate mounting involves making a template to layout and then cutting out the hole. The instructions say you should try to save the mounting stud for the ground strap. I cut around it. This side of the plate doesn't change much so if you just use more caulk in this area it comes out fine. I didn't drill the corners as the instructions stated but I've used a saw before and it came out ok.

When I test fitted the plate I noticed the crown in the top of the trunk and that the reinforcing ribs held the sides up were it bolts down to correct this I used nuts and tightened them on the outside bolts for spacers. Worked great! The 2" hole on the should be moved to the front just before the next bolt in my opinion. The instructions are vague here but when the wires on mine were strung this hole was to far back. The two 5/8" holes needed I drilled behind this hole later after I welded the one in the picture.


After more sanding, bondo, sanding, priming, sanding, etc. I painted the car at the end of September.

The trunks were painted with splatter trunk paint. This stuff works really great!

more speed...

The passenger side went better mostly because it was the second and I learned two things. One, the sail panel is not worth replacing with what is avalible and used parts canablized from California. A used quarter panel from ebay to replace a unusable that was on the car.

The heavy stuff done, let the bondo begin! The doos are on for aligning only, I intend to paint the main body first. The door will be one of the last thing to be painted.

While cleaning out the rusted jack hole I found this mouses' nest. I knew seeing he had snails , this was a real Porsche.

Up to speed

About 2 years ago I started looking into getting a hybrid car. It was after Katrina gas was $3.00 a gallon and the Prius had a waiting list. A Civic hybrid cost $25,000.00 and it still used gas.

I started to research electric cars. I don't drive more than 10 miles to work and other than vacation and seeing my parents on long weekends 150 miles away everything else is in the range of an electric car. Vacation for me is on a motorcycle and I intend to keep another vehicle.

Electro Automotive has a kit for a Porsche 914. It is a great base for a conversion, being a mid engine car with two trunks for batteries. I liked the looks of the car and it was it a kit. I've restored cars before so I wasn't afraid of a 30+ year old car and last February I drove one back from Peoria, about 90 miles away. It was repainted in lacquer, had some body work done to it and rust in the usual places (longs and hellhole area) but very restorable. I've worked on far worse.

I drove the car around until May when I got tired of it leaving an oil spot everywhere from a leak in the oil cooler. I bought the instructions for the kit as well as "Convert It" and stripped the car of the internal combustion engine and components. After inspecting the rust damage I set out to get patch panels to repair the longs, latch area of the door jamb and sail panel. Restoration Design was a website I found when researching and placed an order. They didn't have the door jamb but found them at Mid American Corvette along with a couple of other things I needed.

When the order from Mid American Corvette arrived the door jam was about the thickness of foil and poorly stamped. The next day I received the same order again. They refunded the price of the parts but not the shipping on the second order. WTF? I kept the thin door jambs, you never know....

After waiting 3 weeks for the order from Restoration Design there was no reply so I ordered them from Auto Atlanta along with reinforcing for the longs from 914 limited.

The sail panels are very low grade and I sent one back (no refund on shipping again). I also received one door threshold sill from Auto Atlanta that was usable. The stiffing kit from 914 Limited was a great idea and easy to install with everything ripped off anyway. I ground notches in the bottom lip as shown to give more area to weld. They also set an inner rocker panel and the door threshold sill for the drivers side. Brad said they were from Restoration Design and are great quality.

The jam on the drivers side was pieced together the sail panel did not fit worth a crap and the best it would fit I needed to build up the front edge to match the door with weld.