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!
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