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 3

Today was a little strange. No particular reason, it just feels a little surreal. Working on a car this amazing has something to do with it. Combine that with the high power electric drive train and I think you will understand the feeling.
I have placed an order with Brent Smith Trailers to build a Saker specific transporter trailer by the 12th September. Brent has confirmed this will be achieved and he was happy to accomodate the modifications required to make the trailer just right for the job (this saves alot of hassel with renting or organising transporters plus it solves the problem of eventually having to buy a trailer anyway).

Today Bruce sourced the STi axels and prepared the chassis changes for Paul to weld later in the day. The chassis and mount point changes are now complete from a design point of view and largely complete from a fabrication point of view. We need to remove the motor and transaxle tomorrow so Paul can finish the job.

The eVision is now installed in the dash and we also have some tail lights (will get a third LED light to fill out the space later). We don't need blinkers or reversing lights for a race car (although as you can see we have installed blinkers). We only need brake and rain lights to pass scrutineering. This gives us a few interesting styling options which I might experiment with if we have time.

Until fabrication is complete and the mount points for the controller, contactor box and batteries are complete the focus needs to remain on auxiliary systems and other similar jobs that don't require access to the cockpit.

Tomorrow mount point fabrication will continue as well as auxilary system wiring, dash switches and buttons etc. We might also start looking at the POT box for the accelerator.

More action to come...