Back to Business

While yesterday was a great re-introduction to the project, today we began to make physically evident progress on the car once again. When we first arrived at the shop, Alex and I were tasked with mapping out the wiring that will eventually connect all components of the car. For this, their are two different channels of cables that will run from the batteries in the rear, to the core components in the front. Low power wires will travel inside the car, under the seats and carpet, due to their comparatively worse weather resistance, while higher power wires will travel under the car, along the edge of the out of commission transmission tunnel.

Soon after this, we decided to choose the locations for the final components of the car we hadn't considered yet- namely the DC/DC converter and the charger. For this, North and I created a cardboard mock-up for the converter, and John made one for the charger. We spent some time working with different location possibilities before settling on final places.

Holding the converter mock-up in place

Next, the Calvin arrived with the batteries at long last. We unloaded the box from his truck using the engine hoist, and he began opening the extremely secure enclosure. After it had finally been opened, we quickly got to work placing the batteries in the box. As we began to do this, however, it became apparent that the fit for the batteries would be very tight. Eventually, with the use of a mallet and multiple sets of hands, we crammed all of the batteries into the box.

All of the batteries sitting in our custom box

The batteries haven't yet been wired to each other, and we're certainly a decent way away from wiring up everything in the car together, but today felt like some real concrete progress, involving our reception of one of the three core components of the car, and the finalized plans as far as location of the other parts.