Mission Completed with 1 week to spare!

EV Grin

Took it for a test drive today for the 1st time.
There is still a some more work to do before I take it home, but it is now a fully functioning Electric Vehicle. Here's a re-cap.

Engine In.

Engine out.

Electric Motor In ....
plus Belktronix EV System (Controller, DC/DC, Battery Charger, Pot Box, Contactor, Fuse, Vehicle Integrator.)

Ok, here' some video.

I offered Bob, 1st drive, but as he didn't convert it, he wasn't willing to drive it out on the street. :P
Here I am taking it out into his Ramona neighborhood.


I told Bob the brakes were a bit squishy (technical term for not at all like power brakes). So He gets in to try them out. Luckily they work or else that would have sucked. It would have been a more exciting video though...

T-Rex Lightning Freeway Trip

This man-machine had no problems what-so-ever of eating up freeway speed traffic.
Turns out quite a few cars either sped up or slowed down to take pictures of our 3 T-Rex caravan. Thundersky Lithium batteries held up all day long, we didn't even see a dent on the meter.
Scenic Route to Hotel.

View Larger Map

More T-Rex Lightning Pix

Slideshow of T-Rex Lightning Demo
More pictures will be added as I get them.

Awesome Electric T-Rex Lightning Vehicle

12-09-2007
T-Rex dropped by to show off their incredible Electric Reverse Trikes today to the Electric Vehicle Association of America. We all met up at the Kearney High School parking lot.

I had the pleasure of meeting the Chairman, Richard Groome, whom I'll end up naming a puppy after for his letting me drive one the Bad Boyz from the high school, up the I-805 freeway and all of Mira Mesa Blvd to the hotel he was staying at. Map of the route at end of this post below.

Richard Groome of T-Rex with open top Lightning, Keith (Lightning Bug-E) and yours truly.
Here's a video of the parking lot experience; excuse the Expletive ( I guess that's why I'm not a new anchor.)

Frackin' Sweeeeet.


Lloyd, Bob and Keith trying to harness some Lightning.



T-Rex will be coming out ( I kid you not) with a version for women called a She-Rex.


Here's the best part:
I'll post more pix as I get them from the freeway ride taken by passenger Joey G.
This man-machine had no problems what-so-ever of eating up freeway speed traffic.
Turns out quite a few cars either sped up or slowed down to take pictures of our 3 T-Rex caravan. Thundersky Lithium batteries held up all day long, we didn't even see a dent on the meter.
Scenic Route to Hotel.

View Larger Map

EVS 23 and Electric Vehicle ( EV ) Conversion 12-5-2007

Got up super early this morning to accompany Keith on the drive up to EVS 23 at the Anaheim Convention Center.
Keith and I picked up a BugE slated to be auctioned for charity.
http://musicindustrynewswire.com/2007/12/01/min400_164612.php
more pictures here:
http://www.harveyev.com/cgi-bin/emAlbum.cgi

Here's Keith tying it down to the bed of the pick-up. You might notice he's wearing the Official Electric Dragin' long sleeve t-shirt .



Keith and I, also drove by Aptera to beg them to attend the Electric Dragin' Event coming this January 26-27 @ Barona Drag strip here in San Diego County.
Super Secret Blurry Spy Photo:


When we got back I had just enough time to attach my BelkTronix EV System Controller and DC/DC Convertor +Charger.

EVorBust Store Now Open 12-01-2007

Just in time for X-Mas. EVorBust Gift Shop

Yogurt said it best:

Merchandising, merchandising, where the real money from the movie is made. Spaceballs the T-shirt. Spaceballs the lunchbox. Spaceballs the coloring book. Spaceballs... the flamethrower! Kids love it. And my favorite, Spaceballs the Doll -- me!

Scene from SpaceBalls:

New Logo 11-30-2007

While I'm waiting for BelkTronix to finish fine-tuning my controller (one of his component manufacturers revised a part, so he has to match that revision with his own) I goofed around and created a new logo for the blog. I was going for the '70s vibe with the text. Kinda makes you wanna cruise around and look for a Discotheque.

Some local Electric Vehicles both Live and In Progress

Paul Marshall has his car at Bob's Garage too. Check out the largest car conversion EVer:

Mr. Q worked on this Toyota MR2.


Lloyd is converting a Porsche in his spare time. Ok he has very little spare time, but is Jones-ing for an EV bad, so he's also going the pre-converted route and buying this electric Hyundai:

Electric Vehicle ( EV ) Conversion 11-23-2007

Took some more pix of my Lead Sled.

8 12V PowerSonic PG-12V140-FR in the rear, plus 4 in front all cabled up.
All according to plan:
BelkTronix BatMon battery monitors on each battery.

Will install my PakTrakrs after I'm done testing the TouchScreen Interface...

Theme Song

Ok, this was fun for a bit. Moved it here to avoid loading each and every time.

Electric Vehicle ( EV ) Conversion 11-19-2007

Lloyd helped me load 800 pounds of batteries onto the rear battery packs.
OK, he did most the heavy lifting, but I'm more of a management/supervisor type anyway.

Later, Paul couldn't wait another day for me to wire all of the battery management boards and resistors, so helped me cut, lug, and crimp cables on the condition we would make the wheels spin.

Bob, did the honors after spending ten minutes testing my batteries, checking my connections, and letting me know I connected the front pack to the rear pack wrong.

What happened was that I had labeled the 2 cables (1 red and 1 white) and forgot that the red was to go from Positive in the front pack to Negative in the rear, and the white from the negative connection in the front to positive in the rear. Well it took just 2 days for me to forget and I hooked up the red labeled cable in the rear to the positive and the white to negative. No sparks, but I wasn't getting the expected voltage.

Once we switched the cables around in the Anderson connector, we were good to go.

Bob did the honors of spin testing the motor and wheels. 1st with 4 of the batteries from the rear pack.




We weren't expecting that big of a spark, and didn't want to burn the motor out, so decided to lessen the voltage before connecting the jumper cables again.
Next we tried it with 24 Volts.

I'm pretty stoked, as before today I had not tested the motor. I had seen the rear shaft spin while rolling the car, but not via electrical power.

Electric Vehicle ( EV ) Conversion 11-17-2007

I think we helped raise some cash for kids who are homeless due to the recent fires.
Bob, Bill and Lisa were there.

After the show I went back to Bob's to work on my car and had a couple of volunteers donate some sweat to the venture. Bob is pictured about to help remove the driver's seat while Paul is helping situate the rear battery box.

A couple of days earlier I finished wiring the front 48V battery pack (4 12V batteries) plus the Belktronix BatMons, and an Anderson Connector. It was nice to see that the 400 pounds of batteries were still suspended by my ghetto welding job.

EVs for Charity

EVAOSD is being asked to join in with San Diego Car Clubs to support fire victims and their families this weekend. We have two invitations for this Saturday, November 17, 2007. Please support these events with your electric-drive vehicle and/or your attendance.

Car Show to provide toys for burn victim children during the holidays. Ramona, CA; Fitness Center; 500 Main Street from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday, 11/17/07

Car Club Charity Event from a home built in 1917 in Lemon Grove, CA; 8301 Mt Vernon St.; 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. by Woody Downing Fire Chief Retired and “You-Auto-Know” Dave Stall live radio broadcast www.kceoradio.com.

I urge you to support these outreach Car Shows to support our neighbors in need.

Also next weekend (Saturday, November 24, 2007) Dave Stall is donating a 2 hour Radio Show to discuss electric-drive and our up coming Electric Dragin’ EVent in January. Be sure to attend; bring you car or listen in to the show.More Info at www.ElectricDragin.com

EV ( Electric Vehicle ) Conversion Nov-2007

The car needs a new clutch cable and some additional work that are beyond my BigLots tool set.

Good thing I made friends with a professional EV mechanic, Bob Van Gorder. I've posted about him and his electric Cony before. A few of the cars that will be at the Electric Dragin' EVent were converted by Bob including a Rolls Royce.

So, Keith (of LightningBugE fame), along with Joseph (Friendly Neighborhood Electric Car Dealer) helped me load up the EGP onto a trailer for the 20 mile trek to Ramona, CA. Luckily Bob's shop survived the recent firestorm, and he had an open bay available for me to work on the car there.

While I was there he was readying a Mazda Miata conversion for its 1st test drive. Here's a video of it.

Puppies

"

October 2007

Duke and Duchess our AKC Purebred Saint Bernards had six puppies.

We would like to spread the joy to other families by allowing them to be adopted. If you are interested or know someone that might be interested in getting one (or two), let me know.

Jenny made the following newsletter announcements:

Litter News Vol 1.

After waiting and waiting, the puppies arrived Monday night/Tuesday morning (Oct. 15-16)!

The first one arrived at 8:45 PM and the last one arrived at 7 AM. The biggest of the litter weighed in at 1 pound 8 ounces and the smallest weighed less than 1 pound. We have 5 boys and 2 girls with Momma Duchess right now. Unfortunately, 2 of her puppies weren’t meant to be with us for very long, so they are peacefully resting.

Manny, Tim (my dad), and I were there to help Duchess with her delivery. It was an evening of adventure, excitement, and beauty!

Check out the pictures at: http://s241.photobucket.com/albums/ff98/RoyalLitter/

I’ll keep everyone posted on their development and let you know when there are more pictures to enjoy.

Litter News Vol 2.

We’ve survived Week 1 with the puppies! They are such a joy to watch, especially at 3 a.m. while they cry and grunt looking for milk. Puppy #2 is the vocal one out of the bunch. We’re not sure if he’s practicing for American Idol or a reincarnation of Gizmo (Gremlins Movie, remember?).

We had sad news late last week—we lost our tiniest puppy, Little Lady. We found her around 4 a.m. Thursday cuddled next to her momma. She’s now with the other two that didn’t make it and we have 5 boys and 1 girl that we’re helping Momma take care of now.

I’ve added plenty more pictures onto the website, so check them out when you can You’ll see that they are growing quickly and are becoming quite the little characters. They had a parade of visitors this past Saturday and enjoyed all of the attention. We even had a family come over interested in adopting the girl puppy!

I split the photos into sub-albums by day(s) so it should be easy to look through. http://s241.photobucket.com/albums/ff98/RoyalLitter/

As you all may know, there have been several fires attacking San Diego. One of the fires have come close to our home, but as of now we are safe and at home. We packed up the essentials early Monday morning and are ready to leave if we need to evacuate.

Litter News Vol 3.

It’s been two weeks since the last issue of Litter News and boy have our puppies been growing!

The puppies started opening their eyes around day 13 and their ears began to open shortly after. Then, before we knew it, they started walking. Just this past weekend, they’ve started interacting with one another. They bat each other with their paws and nibble at one another. Last night, I discovered that they have started to sprout their baby teeth!

Momma is doing well and recovered nicely from her surgery and received a clean bill of health from the vet. She’s still nursing the puppies and has continued to be very patient with them. It amazes me how great of a mother she is and how much she watches over them. I was clipping their nails tonight and one of the fellas did not enjoy it at all and let everyone know by screaming and crying. Momma gave me a look and barked at me a bit to let me know she didn’t want me to hurt her puppy. (Note: no puppies were harmed physically, just scared by the experience.)

We had the privilege of giving a couple of puppies sink baths over the weekend, since they became a bit dirty from rolling around in their box (I’ll leave it to your imagination as to what they became dirty with.)

This past weekend, we also moved the puppies and Momma out of the box they have been in since Day 1 into a larger area—it was getting too cramped for all of them. They enjoy their new space and Manny and I enjoy watching over them playing and rough housing with each other.

That concludes this edition of Litter News, as always feel free to check out the pictures at http://s241.photobucket.com/albums/ff98/RoyalLitter/ and best wishes to you.

Electric Dragin' in San Diego Jan 2008

September 2007

I was tapped to be Project Manager for the EVAOSD (Electric Vehicle Association of San Diego).

Our intent is to to create the largest Electric Drive EVent in San Diego (later West Coast, United States, and finally the Planet Earth.)

I made a little Web Site for the extravaganza here: www.ElectricDragin.com

So, to make this happen we need Electric Cars, and we need Sponsors.

By the way, all proceeds go to the San Diego Environmental Foundation.

If you or your company can help, please fill out the sponsorship form or hit the PayPal donation buttons on that site. A small payment will get you or your organization immortalized on T-shirts, Programs and the Web site.

If you would like to participate (Hybrids are welcome) register and come down and race or just show off your vehicle.

EV ( Electric Vehicle ) Conversion August 2007

Summer Vacation.

EV ( Electric Vehicle ) Conversion 7-29-2007

Today was a lot of fun hard work. A couple of trips to AutoZone and the wiring is pretty much done. As I wasn't sure where to drill holes for the new switches, I used some cardboard to test out that everything worked.

I feel it is now better than before, of course it's not pretty yet, but already the functionality is better. Whereas before, I had separate buttons, one to lift up the headlights, and another to turn them on ; I now have a pull knob that turns on the running lights on at the 1st position from off, pull a little more and both the headlights pop up and they turn on as well. Plus I have much larger LEDs to show me what's going on as well as the light up switches themselves.

All internal 12V wiring is done with switches, relays, and fuses as simply as possible.

Keith's Lightning Bug

I rode the Lightning Bug at June's EVAoSD meeting and almost shat myself.
This thing can go!!!
Here's a video I edited for Keith Vansickle.

...feel free to give out my e-mail
address and refer people to me for information. The lightning bug is a
hopped up Bug Ev from blue sky design in oregon. the original is 48 v
with a smaller motor. mine is 72v right now and when I get a bigger
controller will go to 96 or even 120v I want the thing to be so fast no
one but a kid or a speed freak will drive it full open, just like every
other hi performance motorcycle. I am working on another frame and
slightly different body that will take the bigger motor and higher
speeds.
keith

EV ( Electric Vehicle ) Conversion 7-21-2007

Still working on the 12V wiring.
Between runs for relays and wire spools I've started arranging the Belktronix controller, pack charger+dc/dc doodad, and vehicle integrator. Gotta love bungee cords.


Plus I check to see how the rear will look after I replace the school bus tail lights with the late model Mustang tailights (phase3).


Finally I check how the touchscreen will fit in the dash...