[Moltenmetal]

And another

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[Moltenmetal]

A few pics from earlier:

My motor face bracket and my four-slot encoder wheel which I use with an IR emitter/detector pair as my tach pickup:

608 motor mount and tach pickup.jpg

I had a 1/2" thick spacer ring waterjet cut from steel, with a slot cut for the AC50 encoder cable, but I had to split that ring in half again because I didn't have the space to assemble it as a whole ring.

609 split face spacer ring.jpg

Half my trouble was that the AC50 has 1/2" NC threaded holes, but the kit I received from CanEV had 7/16" bolts- which FIT in those holes, just not tightly, and dumb@ss here didn't notice! D'oh! I replaced all of them with the correct 1/2" NC bolts and with this spacer plate, now my motor is mounted solid as a rock! Transmission shifter doesn't move at all with 500 A of forward current or 200 A of regen.

617 destroyed doorskins.jpg

The doorskins consist of vinyl-wrapped Masonite pressboard- not even the good tempered stuff, just cheap crap wrapped with cheap vinyl- don't know if these were original or not, but they got wet and destroyed during storage.

614 inner doorskin on top of outer.jpg

I made a replacement of the inner doorskin from Masonite again, but this time I coated it on both sides with a generous amount of Danish oil before installing it. It has lots of cut-outs for bolt or screw holes and other features- it serves to flatten out the door panel to make it easier to fit something more or less flat over top. Here it is on top of my outer doorskin.

615 outer doorskin showing kerfs.jpg

I used 1/4" thick marine grade teak plywood intended for use in boats for my dash- two pieces laminated together to make the dash. Minimum order was 1/2 sheet, so I had just enough to make two doorskins from this. Unfortunately it is VERY stiff, so I had to cut some sawkerfs about 1/2 way through it every 1/4" or so at two points in order to allow it to flex enough to fit the curvature of the door. Even so, this requires quite a bit of force to hold it flat, which is beyond the limits of the hidden fasteners which normally hold on the doorskin.

[Moltenmetal]

621 doorskin installed.jpg

I think this was during a check fit prior to finishing- with a couple coats of tung oil on the teak, it looks great and pops the grain quite nicely.

619 doorskin in place with door closed.jpg

As the hidden fasteners weren't up to the job, I used screws with finish washers. Personally I like the look. Now all I need is something to finish the edges of the plywood. Too narrow, and I'm far too lazy, to iron on banding and try to trim it all, so I'm thinking about trim options. The door will get a rubber gasket that the door sill seam is missing. One thing is sure- I won't be buying this from Spitbits unless I happen to be travelling to the 'States to pick it up!

623 soft top stretching.jpg

I used an EZ-on soft top, which I though originally was an ironic brand name since it neither came with instructions nor do they give ANY instructions on-line, saying the top is to be installed "by professional installers"- give me a break!- but in fact it was pretty easy after all. It has the snaps pre-installed so as long as you get the mounting plate at the rear centred and glued properly, the rest of the installation is pretty simple.

It does need some stretching to get the top smooth and reasonably wrinkle-free, but my bows are bent and nowhere near perfect anyway so it's pretty nearly as wonky as my door and hood joint fit-ups on the car. Again this car was never a real restoration candidate and I do not have the patience or skill to mess with the panel fitting like EVMetro! A couple hours with the bungees to stretch it in the (comparatively) hot sun today and it was ready to install. My pop riveter got a workout, putting all the replacement snaps on the body and bows. I was using 4-40 nuts as spacers because my pop riveter doesn't have a narrow head and can't get into the snaps or gasket channel so the rivet will snug everything up tight- that was pretty important as without the spacers my rivets left things too sloppy.

[evmetro]

Sweet, those pics make my day! A beautiful car, it's an EV conversion, and it was built by its owner! Do you realize just how rare and beautiful this is?

[Baratong]

I really like how your door panels turned out! Looks very nice.

[Moltenmetal]

Interesting experience just now: took the car for a longer trip, still in the immediate environs of the neighbourhood. Drove down a heavily rutted/potholed street, and hit a particularly hard bump and BAM, the car went dead! Controller wouldn't turn on, but I clearly still had the batteries connected and the whole 12V system was working fine. So I popped the hood and had a look around- nothing shaken loose. Then I started running over the circuitry in my mind...what is in series with the main control power to the controller? Fuses, the "don't drive away while plugged in for charging" interlock...Oh yeah, the inertial switch! Pressed the switch back in and we were off and running again...

Not sure I want that switch to be so sensitive though! We may have bottomed out the driver's side front suspension on that rut, but we were nowhere near the impact of an accident. Might want to re-route that switch to the dashboard, so I can push it back in again if it false trips without having to leave the car and pop the hood...

[samwichse]

Is the inertial sensor omnidirectional? Perhaps its mount angle needs to be rotated 90 degrees to the front or something?

[Moltenmetal]

Omnidirectional in that impacts in any direction seemed to trip it when I was dry testing it prior to installation, but it is definitely not the same sensitivity in all directions,, and I've mounted it vertical which was Randy at CanEV's recommendation. Think I will rotate it horizontal and see what happens. It feels like a ball bearing in a seat, which would seem to be better in the vertical, but I don't have any specs on the switch so it's tough to know what to do other than mount it where it is accessible to the driver so it can be reset. Will do some Googling and see if I can figure it out!

[Moltenmetal]

Googling indicates vertical upward is right. I have mine attached to the side if my junction box, but obviously this is too jiggly a location for it- must mount it to the firewall directly. Rework...!

[samwichse]

Maybe when you remount, use rubber spacers on both sides of the firewall bolts to prevent the transmission of the sharp but small chassis shocks.