The list of “stuff to do” before I put the body on is growing short. Here’s what I got done this week:
I built some new brackets for the headlights. It’s now easy to adjust the position and angle of the lights.:
I installed the battery hold-downs.
I applied some bright orange tape to the high voltage lines.
I used some fairing compound on the area where the headliner will eventually go. I want this to be nice and smooth.
I built some brackets for the AC condenser.
Stuff left to do before the body goes on permanently:
- Weld up some body mount brackets to support things like the rear quarter panels and other pieces of fiberglass not in direct contact with the chassis.
- Add some steel around each of the door/trunk latches.
- Add a support for the rear hood.
- Mount the motor controller radiator.
- Add some steel around each of the hinge locations for the trunk lids.
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.
