Its alive!

Today is our annual block party and my latest deadline for getting the car running. Previous dates were Mid-June, July 4th, the August SFEVA club meeting, Labor Day and now the block party. As the dates were slipping, so were the requirements. I no longer planned to get the car “done,” just running. All I want to do is get it running, that’s all – no charger, no gauges, no DC/DC converter - just running.

I spent an hour or so this morning getting the top rack back into the car and re-assembling the brackets and the Zilla and cables. I needed to make sure all the cables are tight and aligned, so this took some time. I also did some more shrink tubing on the cable ends, even though the lugs are hidden in the box.

Later, I snuck out of the block party to do the battery cabling. I was a little concerned about this after my meltdown, so I put on rubber gloves, safety glasses and tightened up one cable at a time being careful that neither end was touching anything other than the battery post where it belonged. I taped up my ½ inch open end wrench so that only the open end section was exposed to insulate it in case I dropped it. I had the circuit breaker switched off and triple checked the Zilla and contactor wiring to make sure there were no shorts in the cabling. This was nerve racking work, but I got through all three racks without incident. After a sigh of relief I sat behind the wheel and turned the key. I don’t have the instruments installed, so all I could do was listen to the contactor close to indicate the car was working. I gave it a little juice and it moved! The Zilla hisses a little at low speed so that was a good indication that it was working.

Since we had the street blocked off for the party I decided to take it out for a spin. My wife captured it on video which I’ll edit down and post on the site later – maybe YouTube too. I can’t tell you what a relief it was to have the car running, but it did not want to go back up the hill. It would nudge a long then stop then nudge a long again. I got it back to my driveway and after answering questions and getting congratulated I got out my laptop to see what the Hairball thinks is wrong. It gave me an error code saying that the SLI battery was too low and the hairball was shutting down. Figures. SLI stands for Starter, Lights, Ignition – this is the battery that came with the car to start the gas engine. It had been sitting a year and, of course, I never thought to charge it.

At least it’s an easy fix.