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| Date | Item |
| 1991 | Start to get a real interest in building my own electric car. |
| April 2006 |
Decide its finally time to convert. |
| 5-13-06 | Picked up the donor vehicle. Motor was already removed. I initially thought that this was a bonus, but this ended up being a pain because I was missing some critical parts such as the motor mounts. Also, I didn't have the luxury of knowing which wires went where to know if they were important or not. This wasn't a huge problem because the wiring is pretty simple since its only a 1980 vehicle. |
| Emptied the vehicle out of all internal items. The van had a full camper suite, minus the pop-up. All of the cabinets were a) really too big for functionality and b) extremely heavy. My plan is to put some cabinets back eventually, but using cabinets built out of something less heavy. | |
| Removed gas tank and other ICE components. Yiiick - gasoline is smelly! | |
| Cut out the battery box holes. Used a right angle grinder and sawsall. The sawsall worked the best for cutting straight lines. This was a little scary at first, cutting into a perfectly good van. | |
| 7-16-06 | Ordered the installation kit from ElectroAutomotive.com |
| Picked up all 26 batteries from local distributer. | |
| Still waiting for my motor to be delivered. | |
| 9-01-06 | Put in PO for battery boxes from local sheet metal shop. |
| Still waiting for my motor to be delivered. | |
| 5-17-07 | Ordered the new springs today - probably could have done this many months ago. Calculated that the front axle has 500 extra lbs and the rear has 800 lbs of weight, more than stock. Hopefully this will be about right. |
