Still crazy after all these months
Tuesday, 23 Nov 2004 Ghia
I’m finding out that when a huge project ends, all is not beer and skittles. Now you have to do all the things that stacked up behind the huge project. I expect that when that’s finished I’ll have to do the things that stacked up while I was catching up. I feel like Achilles trying to catch the tortoise.
Fortunately, calculus proves that the Greek will eventually catch up to and pass the reptile, so surely the Geek will eventually catch up with and complete the hospital network project list.
In the meantime, I managed to coax a week of vacation out of my corporate overlords and will be sneaking off to Portland for Thanksgiving with the parents this afternoon.
And I finally found some time to work on the Ghia. I didn’t get much done, but it was the first time in two months.
I made a drilling jig to drill properly-spaced holes in the front battery shelf. The ones I did by hand and eyeball on the back shelf didn’t line up very straight and caused some problems. The jig made the holes for the front shelf come out much better.
While I was working on this, the UPS driver brought me my battery regulators! I needed to have these in order to finalize the battery mounting scheme. It’s best to mount them directly to the batteries, but the top of the batteries will be taken up with the wingnuts that will hold the batteries down. I need to work out some sort of bracket, probably something that will in turn be held down by the wingnuts, and help spread the hold-down force over a larger area so the battery doesn’t get cracked open.
As this picture shows, the upper right mounting hole is obscured by the heat sink. I’ll need to solve this little problem. Perhaps a circlip would work.
The (MS Word document warning) documentation that came with the regulators is not very good, I’m afraid. It contains many references to an earlier version of the regulator, and leaves out all the new features of the current version. I don’t know what the LEDs signify, nor can I determine the best way to wire them up. Fortunately, the designer Rich Rudman is easily contacted for questions, which I did last night via email. We’ll see how that goes.
I’ve rethought the placement of the PFC-20 charger. I think it will go into the nose of the Ghia instead of between the batteries and the dashboard. The space is just too tight and I need to put other things there, such as contactors and heaters and ductwork and dashboard wiring. Having the charger in the nose is worrisome because it will be the first component mashed if I get into a wreck, and it’s the single most expensive component. Of course, crunching the nose of the Ghia would pretty much total the car, since they’re so hard to repair. No spares, and hand-shaped by German craftsmen. I think I’ll just continue to avoid accidents.
I’m getting pretty close to wiring up the batteries and the charging system. Next big item - the controller.
Oops, time to close — Anna just brought in a Harbor Freight catalog with today’s mail.
Fortunately, calculus proves that the Greek will eventually catch up to and pass the reptile, so surely the Geek will eventually catch up with and complete the hospital network project list.
In the meantime, I managed to coax a week of vacation out of my corporate overlords and will be sneaking off to Portland for Thanksgiving with the parents this afternoon.
And I finally found some time to work on the Ghia. I didn’t get much done, but it was the first time in two months.
I made a drilling jig to drill properly-spaced holes in the front battery shelf. The ones I did by hand and eyeball on the back shelf didn’t line up very straight and caused some problems. The jig made the holes for the front shelf come out much better.
While I was working on this, the UPS driver brought me my battery regulators! I needed to have these in order to finalize the battery mounting scheme. It’s best to mount them directly to the batteries, but the top of the batteries will be taken up with the wingnuts that will hold the batteries down. I need to work out some sort of bracket, probably something that will in turn be held down by the wingnuts, and help spread the hold-down force over a larger area so the battery doesn’t get cracked open.
As this picture shows, the upper right mounting hole is obscured by the heat sink. I’ll need to solve this little problem. Perhaps a circlip would work.
The (MS Word document warning) documentation that came with the regulators is not very good, I’m afraid. It contains many references to an earlier version of the regulator, and leaves out all the new features of the current version. I don’t know what the LEDs signify, nor can I determine the best way to wire them up. Fortunately, the designer Rich Rudman is easily contacted for questions, which I did last night via email. We’ll see how that goes.
I’ve rethought the placement of the PFC-20 charger. I think it will go into the nose of the Ghia instead of between the batteries and the dashboard. The space is just too tight and I need to put other things there, such as contactors and heaters and ductwork and dashboard wiring. Having the charger in the nose is worrisome because it will be the first component mashed if I get into a wreck, and it’s the single most expensive component. Of course, crunching the nose of the Ghia would pretty much total the car, since they’re so hard to repair. No spares, and hand-shaped by German craftsmen. I think I’ll just continue to avoid accidents.
I’m getting pretty close to wiring up the batteries and the charging system. Next big item - the controller.
Oops, time to close — Anna just brought in a Harbor Freight catalog with today’s mail.
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