In early April I noticed a squeaking noise coming from the adapter/coupler and it was very gradually getting louder to the point where you could hear it in carparks. Instead of having people stare at the car because it crawled around the carpark making no noise, people in carparks were looking because it made a weird whistling/scraping noise like a box of canaries being shaken vigorously.
It got so annoying that I finally bit the bullet and purchased a chain hoist to haul out the motor to see what all the fuss was about. I soon learnt how easy things were made with a chain hoist. I really wish I'd bought one months ago - they're brilliant! So, after disconnecting the control panel and moving it aside, I loosened all the motor bolts, tightened the hoist to take the weight of the motor, then took out the motor bolts. Once I'd found the missing bolt I'd forgotten to undo, it popped apart easily and I hoisted it out. I soon found the problem too, my coupler had moved forward by about a centimetre; just enough for it to touch the gearbox housing.
I pushed it back and tightened up the side screws like never before as I don't really feel like hauling the motor out every 4 months... I then lowered the motor back down and slipped it into the gearbox again. A few bolts later and I spun the motor up with just a normal whirring noise and no more scraping. Phew.
So it's back to scaring people in car parks again.
I also had a visit from fellow EV converters Rex Nowland and his lovely wife over the weekend. They flew up from Nelson to stop by and see the car, and inadvertently we created the first official NZEVA New Plymouth meeting! We posed for a photo in front of the Tredia after dinner on Sunday night. Rex doesn't have a website at present but here's a link to his evalbum.com page: http://www.evalbum.com/1675
Rex is currently upgrading his system from 72v to 120v which should give his classic Beetle a new lease of life. He showed me some photos and I was stunned at the quality of the workmanship in his car. It was absolutely brilliant. Thanks for the visit and thanks for dinner - next one's on me. :)
Another pleasant surprise arrived in the mail advising me that I'd won an award from the Taranaki Regional Council for "Innovation and efficient use of energy for transportation". We headed down to the council building a couple of weeks later to collect the award and receive a $200 restaurant voucher! So today we're over the moon and busy figuring out where and when we should go! Veronika had the video camera rolling at the little ceremony and time permitting I'll edit it into the next video whenever that may be!
I noticed one of the batteries was failing in the rear battery box. Battery number seven was gassing excessively and splattering acid around it's vents after only normal driving. The other batteries were all fine and operating normally but this one battery was reducing the performance and range of the whole pack. All the batteries are under warranty so I was able to swap out the misbehaving battery and things were back to normal. Whew!
Brrrrrr! Winter's setting in and the temperature is plummeting! To remove sluggish battery performance I'm creating a special wrapping using a sheet of rubber foam with a sheet of foil adhered to it. I'll put this around the front batteries to keep them warm during short trips. I've ordered the foam but it will take a few days to arrive. We've also begun using a timer to begin charging the car at 5am. This way the car is charged and the batteries are warm at 8am.
My wife and I have just bought our first house here in New Plymouth. This is good news for us but bad news for our nerves as things are flat out! We have the house to organise, things to be fixed, painting to do, renovating to do, and lots of new things that have to be purchased! Not only that, but we're both working crazy hours lately so the chances of me regularly updating the website are reduced greatly.
Just before we moved in I fitted a couple of cheap solar panels on the back shelf to charge up the accessories battery during the day as it's now parked outside (eek! No garage at our new place!) Previously we had to "pop the hood" each day and connect one of my many spare 12 volt chargers to charge up the accessories battery which was getting a bit annoying.
While the car's running fine, we're now living further from town and right at the very top of a hilly range which means many more kilometres of 200-300 amp mountains to climb each day. The battery pack is getting a serious workout so let's hope it's up to it. What worries me more at the moment is the fact that the car has no garage and is forced to sit outside in the rain on this salty coastal town. The rust is already starting to bubble up again in the back. This is very intriguing as after all that body-filler I had no idea there was still any metal left back there! Hehehe
