Zach’s Electric Diablo

I’ve been working on my car almost everyday for the last three weeks. It has been great, I’ve gotten a ton of stuff done.

My roll cage/body mount needed to be tweaked in order to get everything lined up. This meant cutting it off and re-welding it. Now the body sits on the chassis squarely and the wheel wells line up with the wheels. While I was at it, I finished up welding the windshield columns and added some gussets to beef up the roll cage.

Long ago I cut out a large section of the center console. The chassis came with a center console that was extra large to make room for a large fuel tank. Seeing that I didn’t need a fuel tank, I decided to retake the space by cutting it out. Now I’ve re-welded a smaller center console and filled in all the holes.

I added connectors on the battery cables and the cables to the motor. This adds a level of safety when working around the high voltage. It also makes it very easy to remove all the high power electronics, just take apart a few connectors and all the high voltage electronics can be removed.

I started wiring the battery box for BMS v2. One wire to each battery.

I started preparing the body for mounting. Step one is to scrub off all the resin wax. I flipped the body over and scrubbed the heck out of it. Next I’ll be painting the underside black and mounting all the grills. Then I can glue it to the chassis.

Here’s some other misc. stuff I did, but didn’t take pictures of:

- Cut out a safety cover for the batteries.

- Fabricated a safety cover for all the high voltage electronics. I used 1/8 polycarb bent in a sheetmetal break. Polycarb is great as is bends just like metal.

- Discovered that my air lift system kind of sucks. To install it, I would need to modify the chassis a bit. Plus in the best case it would raise the nose by 2″. I think I might ditch it and just put rollers under the front nose.

- Solved the problem with the vacuum brake booster. I figured out that one of the ports on the reservoir had a built in one-way valve, and I had the tubes on backwards.

- I modified the battery box to accommodate some better battery hold downs.

Today, I put up some new shelves in my container to try and organize it a little better. With winter on its way, I need room in there for epoxied and filled parts to cure.

I also realized that it’s getting dark much earlier and I often find myself driving the car at night. Holding a flashlight while driving is a little tough. So, I went ahead and installed the headlights. I did a test fit of the body to see how much the lights need to be raised. Looks like somewhere around an inch and a half will do.

At the end of the day I spent a little time trying to figure out why my water pump (used to cool the zilla motor controller) keeps cycling on and off. I didn’t figure this one out…

I used the forklift to bring the body into the shop. I kind of hope the car never does this on its own.

I bent up most of the pieces for the roll cage and started welding them together.

I flipped my body over to start laying out the roll cage:

Well it’s less of a roll cage and more of a body mounting system. Either way, it’s going to be made from 1.5″ .120 wall steel tube. I bought an el-cheapo bender from Harbor Freight with the hopes that it would make decent enough bends for my needs. I even tried packing the tube with sand.

Unfortunately, it didn’t work so well.

Which gave me all the more reason to learn how to use the three wheel bender. It can’t do a real tight radius, but after looking at all the bends I actually need, it should do the trick. Here it is bending the piece that goes right above the windshield.

I’m going to start building the roll cage next week and wanted to try the body on the chassis to get some measurements (plus I wanted to see how cool it was going to look).

So, I lifted the body into the air with my lift gantry (worked like a charm):

Then I just rolled the chassis underneath:

Problem #1: The D&R body that I have has this nice fiberglassed trunk (in the front).

However, that trunk interferes with the master cylinder:

My solution was to temporarily remove the master cylinder until I decide how to cut out that nice fiberglassed trunk.

Problem #2: There is a support rail on the chassis that supports the fiberglass cross member that spans the engine compartment.

However, it can’t move into place because the bottom of the very back of the body interferes with another piece on the chassis:

Update: Check out my posting on kitcentral.com for answers to these questions.