After a week of idling, I felt the motor was finally ready to go.  The repaired E-meter just happened to arrive that same day, so it was time to put the car back together.  Also I had to get it out of the garage, to allow some service work on its ICE sister, my other 88' Civic hatchback, which is gas powered.

During the week while the motor was idling, I had rewired some of the high voltage circuits. I relocated the main fuse from inside the front contactor box, to beside the rear contactor box. 

Anyway, on Wednesday I was able to put the car back together, still minus the rear "deck" over the back batteries, and take it out for a spin.  What a glorious feeling!  It worked so well, that I drove it to work Thursday and Friday.  So far it is using much more power per mile than it should, but I suspect this is due to the old hard tires, and the alignment that has yet to be done.  I am holding off on that until the new struts are put on.  I have decided the front springs are not up to the load, so I am going to be moving up to something from a heavier Honda.  This time instead of blindly changing parts, I will weight the car and then find the springs from a Honda or Acura with a comparable empty front axle weight.  Hopefully I will be able to find something that fits.  As it is, the front is low enough to throw off the camber.

Today was mostly parts chasing.  I was out at my favorite salvage yard looking for some of the missing trim pieces.  I am still trying to locate a good used right side mirror, an inside mirror, and one of those very rare Civic consoles, so I will have a place to mount future projects.  I was also out looking for anything to help with the deck project, as I am trying to avoid that amateur "hacked out of plywood and covered with carpet look".  I want it to look like Honda might have built it.  I did find a couple of things that should help with that.  Honda CRXs feature a deck area in back, somewhat similar to what I am planning, and to prevent things from sliding off the front of their deck, they have a nice little rail across the front.  I was able to find a black one of these on an '87 CRX which should match the Civic quite nicely.  I also picked up a couple of rear floor hatches from a pair of Mercury Sable station wagons.  These are equipped with nice flush locking latches that match the Civic interior very nicely. 

I finally got the ammeter shunt switch wired in, so I can select between motor amps and battery amps.  Here it has been installed in the dash for several weeks, but never hooked up.

I also picked up a very nice interior pre-heater, just like the one I had on my old Jet conversion, on close-out at Advance Auto Parts.  On the Jet I had one wired up with a 12 hour delay timer, but this one is going on a 7 day electronic timer that has been languishing in my project box for several years.  These are kind of slick little heaters, 900 watts 120 VAC, with a bracket that mounts permanently in the car, that the heater just snaps into.  That way you just pop it out in the summer time.

Wow, I haven't updated this in a while have I!

Much has happened in the past 3 months, some good, some not so good.  The motor started arcing again, so I removed it and took it to an electric motor repair shop for inspection.  Unfortunately, they completely destroyed the motor while testing it, and refuse to take any responsibility for their actions.  Fortunately I have been able to locate another motor, and it is on its way here.  It has already been correctly setup for my backwards turning Honda, so there should be no more arcing problems.