Never been one to let the carrier drop

Well, things continue to improve.  Today I put on the access covers to the shiny new PVC boxes that I replaced the old crappy/rusting/not outdoor grade metal junction boxes with, lowered the car to the ground, and backed it out into the driveway, then fought with the cooling loop until it agreed to flow again. (Memo to self – next time do not forget expansion res placed higher than rest of car). Then I drove the car from this cul-de-sac to the next one six times, then across Crown Valley to the Shell station. The tags are still dead, so I had a nervious moment when a cop went by, but apparently he wasn’t paying attention. (I did print out a insurance card and bring it with me, so all I would get – I think – is a fix-it ticket for dead tags). I cleaned the windshield, put air in the tires.. (I had to pay $0.75, because it would be kind of hard for me to claim to be a customer – the hood was still off at this point, and just about anyone could tell the car was not powered by gasoline).

So far I haven’t climbed any serious hills nor gone over 35 mph. The power seems okay, the cogging problem on starts seems gone. Tomorrow I’m going to try and drive the car to the local elementary school and back, which at least involves some hillclimbing. If it does that okay, I’m going to try and take it to the DMV and get tags.

I’m trying to decide which of the following projects to tackle next on the car:

1) Top for the rear to cover the battery boxes so car is no longer open to the road in the back (and hence quieter)

2) Rewire hairball of a inverter interface

3)  Get Peltier heat pump array working.

4) Get LCD module talking to mk3 LCD driver, and put back together user interface

All of them are major undertakings, although probably with proper planning none of them involve the car being undrivable for more than a couple of hours.  I also want to take the car to a body shop and get the right headlamp repainted and reaimed, and the marker light replaced, and possibly look into some other minor cosmetic bodywork. I also need to figure out the sunroof switch and wire up something to take it’s place.

Probably the next logical thing to do is to get the mk3eb base code working well.. then I can start using the mk3eb modules everywhere for those little microcontroller-friendly tasks. I also need to get a SBC to replace the peice-o-crap-laptop that finally died. Anyone know a good, easy to develop for SBC? Must have several serial ports, a ethernet jack, and the possibility of adding wifi..

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