UPDATE: February 26, 2007

The new license plates arrived today. Looks good!

UPDATE: February 11, 2006

Not much work on the project since last report. Leaky tires were fixed (tubes put in two front tires) and all wheels remounted with new wheel studs and nuts.

I also made an "Executive Decision:" I have a set of high-performance disk brakes off a VW Scirocco, which I had intended to install on the project car. The decision I made was to defer the brakes until the car is up and running and then determine IF I really need the Scirocco brakes. The change-over is no small job.

The battery was removed.

February 5, 2007

UPDATE:
No luck getting the wheel lug nut off ... even after heating with a propane torch. So I did the "sure-fire" thing: I took my 1/2" electric drill and drilled down through the lug nut and wheel stud. Hard job, not pretty, but it worked.

Next, I discovered that ALL of the lug nuts on all four wheels were apparently tightened by a crazed impact wrench cowboy. No way I could budge them. Today, I rented an electric impact wrench and finally got 14 of the remaining 15 lug nuts off. Well ... At least there is only one more nut to be drilled out!

This is going to a long project!

February 3, 2007

Four 130 watt Kyocera Solar panels arrived Friday. Later they will be mounted in a sun-tracking mount and the energy will be used to recharge the batteries in the Electric VW. Can you imagine: Driving a car that NEVER needs gasoline and NEVER needs to be plugged into the power grid?

(PS: For you techno-readers, the solar panels are not expected to be a "fast-charge" system for the batteries. With a 9-amp charge rate, if the deep-cycle batteries are pretty well discharged, I expect that it will take about two or three days of good sunlight to recharge the pack ... maybe even more. But since I don't "need" to drive the car every day, that's no problem. If needed, I can also simply plug the on-board charger into the power grid and recharge overnight. Is that cheating?))

Last look at the old "stinkpot." I'm not sure when it will be pulled out, but it will be soon!

One of the first jobs was to remove the two front wheels and determine where the slow air leak was. Problem #1: One of the lug nuts was too tight and when I went to loosen it, the nut rounded off and I couldn't budge it. Tomorrow, I'll try to heat it with a propane torch and see if that will loosen it up. If not, then I'll have to use a Dremel and cut the nut off.

Measuring the height of the bottom of the fender well. When the car is loaded with the batteries, it will be a heavy vehicle. I will probably have to buy special springs in order to reestablish this original height. (Did you notice that the car has been lowered? Very cool ... and I want to keep it this way.)

Why am I dressed so warmly? Maybe because it's 28 degrees!