Palo Alto EV Rally

The EV Rally on Saturday August 29th was a great success. Soon after setting up the space I had a constant stream of educated, interested EV enthusiasts checking out the car. Lots of good questions comments and good words. A number of people were interested in the kit, and there were a few who were interested in a completed car rather than attempting the conversion themselves - even had one guy offer to buy the car!
Later in the afternoon I had Jerry Pohorsky, the
EAA Silicon Valley President and organizer of the event, come by and give me an award for the best classic conversion. He was very complimentary of the car and our kit.
The event was scheduled to end at 4:00 and by then the crowd was dwindling. I had a couple of people interested in a ride, so off we went. I knew I had an error on my Zilla because the check engine light was lit and the charge light wasn't, but the car ran fine so I decided to ignore the error. Once behind the wheel I noticed the needle on the tach was pointing straight down - as if it was pegged - hmmm. The car ran fine so off we went, spinning the tires out of the parking lot and on to El Camino Real. 2 blocks down and 2 blocks back and I noticed the blinkers weren't working, but the tach needle was pulsing when the blinkers were on - hmmmm again.

For the next ride I had my passenger check the brake lights before getting in and took it much easier, even when we saw a 67 Mustang GT at a stop light... We got back into the lot without insident (or a ticket). I said goodbye to my passenger and started to break down my booth while trying to figure out what whent wrong with my 12v system. The first guess was a blown fuse and that the circuit fed back through the Tach causing it's problems.

After returning home I located the blown fuse and realized I probably popped it while towing the car. I have a trailer wiring harness connected to the Miata's lights so that when I tow it to a show the tail lights and brake lights work. I must have had it wired to the tow car with the power on in both cars to blow the fuse. Once I replaced the fuse the check engine light went out, the charge light is lit and he blinkers work (yay!) the tach, however still has its needle on the wrong side of the dial. Now, when I start the car up it pegs under zero rpm. I'll have to pull the dash apart to fix it...

The Zilla is back!

After what seems like forever, the Zilla controller will be back in production.
http://www.cafeelectricpress.com/blog/?cat=2

Happy day!

A trip to the BAR

Part of registering an EV conversion is having your car inspected by a Referee. They aren't checking your work or to validate if the car is "road worthy" they just look under the hood to see if they can spot an ICE hiding somewhere.

I called the number listed on the DMV web page and made an appointment. The closest location was at a college campus about 11 miles away with most of it up hill. I decided to not take any chances and tow the car.

I found a flat street within a mile of the college to disengage the car from the tow vehicle and drive it into the college. There was a lot of construction going on and the signs that were to guide me to the shop were less than obvious.

The referee was waiting for me in the college parking lot, and pointed me down to his shop. He was obviously a car guy and thought the Miata was really cool. He said it sounded like a big RC Car.

I gave a quick tour to him and a couple of his helpers/students who collected from the nearby shop bays. After a long discussion about estimated miles/gallon - "if it doesn't use gas than how can you say it gets an 80 mpg equivalent?" the crowd dispersed. I'll try to stay away from math next time...
One of the other student started telling me he is working on a hydrogen fuel cell project. I started to ask him if it was true that it took 4 times the energy - but decided not to press my luck.

At any rate, I signed a number of $0 estimates similar to a working garage (except for the $0 part) and they looked, but could not find an ICE hidden anywhere.
While my certificate was being printed, the next appoitnment drove up - a RX8 that evidently had evidently too loud of an exhaust note. The referee told the RX8 owner to look at my car, which seemed to puzzle him a bit.

With the certificate in hand, I made my exit, chirping the tires.

Blocked grill and "monster teeth"

Made a few changes in the grill area of the car. First of all, I bought a tow bar (from Harbor Freight) and mounting bracket (from Renenmetal) so that I can easily tow the car to events.

Miata's originally come with bracket on the sides of the grill area to tie the car down during transportation. They are known among the Miata aficionados as "baby teeth"and removing them is a mark of an enthusiast. My donor had them removed, but the tow bar mount came with "super sized" mounts. So rather than baby teeth, my car has monster teeth. I also wired up a trailer light wiring harness so the car's tail lights work while being towed.

Later, I got the bright idea to block the grill to improve the aerodynamics a bit. I bought a sheet of aluminum at the hardware store and after making a template, cut it to size. It took a while to get it to fit right. I used some leftover vacuum hose to cover the bottom lip.
I was going to paint it flat black, but I liked the aluminum look - it reminds me of an early 60's drag racer.
Seems to help as my range on the street appears to be about the same as on the highway.