The car became operational 11 December, 1999, and was displayed at the MAEAA chapter meeting that afternoon.  Everything seemed okay, except for a hiccup under power.  Unfortunately the hiccup was the result of a plasma ball in the brushes.  For a complete look at the damage check out the Fireball page.  The replacement parts have arrived, so hopefully I will have it back together soon. 

The fireball was actually caused by improper brush timing.  I had the motor set to neutral not advanced for the reverse rotation.

A few other problems were detected during its "shakedown cruise" including bad rear wheel bearings, and undersized heater relays.  The heater turned on just fine, but the first time I turned it off, all three relays smoked.  I think they may have been inspired by the example set by the E-meter.  A few days before the car first ran, I discovered a wiring error in the Emeter circuit in the least pleasant manner.  A thin line of smoke coming up from behind the meter.  Upon opening the meter I discovered it now featured a crispy crunchy black center.  At the moment it is back home at Cruising Equipment getting the main circuit board replaced.

The Prelude seats have still to be installed, and the rear "deck" over the batteries is only partially completed.  The Rudman Regulator box, and wiring has also yet to be completed.   The car isn't done, but it is getting there.

The project goes on, but as usual, sometimes in circles.  I have been working on the rear "deck" while waiting on the motor repair parts.  After laboriously making patterns for the deck to fit around the placing inner body panels, then cutting and trimming plywood to fit, I realized this may be the wrong way to go.  I suspect a better approach would be to build the deck with the panels out of the car, and then cut the panels to clear the deck.  This way the deck would be anchored to the steel structure of the car, and the plastic would not be supporting any weight.  Any repairs to the stock wiring, which requires the body panels to be removed, would no longer require the deck to come out first.  In the mean time, these pictures of the deck as of 12/29/99, give you some idea as to what the end result may look like.  Obviously, the center open area is where the access hatches will go, and the cross bars are only temporary.

You may have noticed, I turned the charger around.  This way its exhaust fans feed directly into the rear compartment vent fans.  (There is always something you could have done differently.)

As always, I will post more, when there is more to post.

To help everyone get some idea of the layout of the car, I created this.  It isn't precisely to scale, but it is close.  As you can see, I tried very hard to keep this thing from turning out tail heavy.  My previous EV was also a front wheel drive, but was very tail heavy and had handling and traction problems as a result.  All fifteen of its rear batteries were behind the rear axle.  On this car I managed to fit 20 batteries in the area where the bottom of the back seat and the gas tank were.  The only thing behind the axle is the 20 pound battery charger.  A significant portion of the front battery pack is actually ahead of the front axle center line, to assist in keeping the car balanced properly.