Day 8

It was very cold this morning and it seemed to get colder as the day went on (winter is fighting back).

Today Bruce focused on finishing the half shafts (the car won't be going far without these!). I spent some time organising a sign writer to make decals of the sponsor's logos to go on the car. This included sizing them up and making a pattern for the logo going on the top of the front windscreen.

The radiator turned up today. This encouraged me to look at the details of how we are going to plumb this thing in. Turns out we have a bit of fluffing about to do (always the way). The inlets/outlets on the radiator, inverter and the pipe to the back of the car all have different diameters. Paul is going to make appropriate adapters for the pipe which solves most of the problems. Still leaves us with the inverter to motor connection which we will sort out with an appropriate size change adapter (could change the inlet on the motor or inverter, but I would rather not play around with these, at least until we have fired it all up). To get everything ready for Paul, I removed the aluminum pipes from the car and cut of the ends we don't need. The radiator receives air from the front air intake which is at ankle hight. This air is channeled up through the near horizontal radiator before exiting through the middle of the bonnet (this increases down force and reduces drag.

Now that the heavy engineering is finished in the cabin, I set about tidying up. After vacuuming I installed the POT box and connected the recently fabricated connecting rod (also attaching a return spring to the arm). Everything lined up nicely and the travel is good. It is all mounted above the level of the steering column, so it is well out of the way.

Earlier in the morning we also went and checked out the trailer progress. Everything is looking good. Discussed a few minor details like hook locations. The trailer will have a scissor jack at the front to control the tilt angle. We sourced one of these from a wrecker. Tried to get a common one with some corrosion protection which I think we did a reasonable job of (looks like it is anodised).

Thats all for today.

Day 5

Friday. Today we completed the welding for the motor mounts and the seats (Bruce and I prepared the parts and Paul did the welding).

Also, we began fitting out the accelerator POT with appropriate attachments to connect it to the accelerator pedal (required the creation of an arm and a bracket to fit in the Saker's pedal box). We plan on using a rod and a couple of ball joints to connect the accelerator pedal to the POT arm. As well as the internal POT spring we will add a spring to the POT's arm to prevent it staying open if something goes wrong.

Earlier this morning I had a quick look at the on board computer to prepare for the wiring. I have come to the conclusion that this will be very easy to get going. I'm looking forward to when the internal wiring can begin as this starts to make it feel real. We still need to create the fittings to hold the inverter, contactor box and the batteries. When this messy work is complete, then we will start the wiring. Hopefully the wiring will start on Monday at the latest.

Before I go, if you haven't noticed yet, the greenstage website has been updated and it is no longer just a stub. It shows our imediate high level goals and ways in which you can become involved. Check it out: http://www.greenstage.co.nz

Enjoy.