A couple of weeks ago, as we were installing the batteries, we met with Mauricio Suazo, the owner of Florida Leather Supply, in Little Havana. They are suppliers of all kinds of fabrics and they make custom interios for boats and cars. Mauricio saw us working at Nico’s and offered t make the interior of the car for us, so we accepted.

We dropped off the seats, headliner and doorpanels, and the fabric, given to us by Valey Forge Fabrics, as they are one of the sponsors of Green Art Fair Miami 2008. The interior is going to look real funky with the orange and very earthy green. This fabric color combnination was done by Luis Valenzuela, from GreenArtUSA and Barbie Alfonzo from Bebecito Organic. They are now our fabric consultants HA!

We also took all the interior plastics to Danny’s house and cleaned them. Even though they did not sponsor us, we want to let you know that OxiClean works like a charm for cleaning plastic… wow. Looking good now. Hopefully next week we will be able to put the car all together.

A lot of things happening today. When I got to my office, we had received our Manzanita PFC20 charger our IOTA 12Vc charger (to be used as 144VDC-12VDC converter) from our friends at Grassroots EV (thanks Audrey and Steve for all the support!), the charger plug and cord plug from Pass and Seymour (Thanks Tim Scheerer from United Electrical Sales), and the relays for the rear battery box fan and for the contact switch from KTA.

Also, Danny finally fullfilled his dream of having a MOMO sterring wheel in the Golf. This has nothing to do with Electric Vehicles, but he likes it, so that’s that! hahaha

Also, we went back to see the car in Signature Auto Body. Shimon is already getting the job done great! the car was fully sanded and all the rust was gone and primed!

So we just got busy taking the interior of the car out to get it reupholstered…. details on that coming soon. We have something really cool planned.

Eric, from Dockside gave us his car interior expert advise and we took the whole interior out in less than two hours without loosing a screw or braking a clip! incredible.

Also, we want to congratulate the new president elect, Barack Obama. Hopefully the new administration will provide incentives for EVs!

Today was a great day for our project. Once again, we put the car on a tow truck and got it out of Nico’s shop.

The car went into the body shop for a much needed make over. Our friends at Signature Auto Body in Hallandale welcomed our car to get it re done. The shop owner, Shimon Kapeta wecomed us and assured us that they would do a real nice job with the Buzz.

He even assigned his best worker to get it all fixed up. What they are going to do is get rid of all the rusty pieces, fix the little bumps and dings the car has and them prime the whole car. As we are going to wrap it, it doesn’t make sense to wait an extra week to get it painted. Especially because he assured us that the wrap will damage the paint if we ever remove it. If we never remove it, then why do we need paint, right? We cant wait to see it done!

All we need to do is find some replacement parts for some items that are missing or broken.

Flooded lead acid batteries, like the ones we are using for our car have a special ability of releasing Hydrogen gas when they charge. When this gas accumulates it can explode if ignited. The front battery rack would be OK, as it is “out in the open, under the hood of the car… so no problem there. However, in the rear battery box in the trunk of our car, once it is sealed, it can and will accumulate. This is why we are installing a gas extraction system.

For this we used a marine engine room blower. This is a little electric fan that runs on 12Vdc and does not arc when you turn it on. This is good because an arc can make this accumulated hydrogen explode. So, we cut a hole in the rear passenger wheel well and installed ducting to transport the gas out.

We used a 2 3/4 hole drill bit, and a 3 inch pvc pipe fitting with some silicone to create the opening in the wheel well and the battery box. For this we had to move some batteries out of the box… they are heavy. Then we installed the fan against the inside of the wheel well, in the trunk. Once it was all installed we zip tied everything together.

We tested the fan real quick with one of the batteries and we are confident it can move some air and gas…. We will be wiring the fan with a turbo timer to keep it running after the charger is unplugged. Once we get to that part, we’ll let you know how.

Wow, recovering from Azul’s wedding was interesting, but we got a wholesome Venezulean breakfast (arepas con perico), at my girlfriend, Barbie’s house and we were back up on track.

Today we dedicated our time to planning the next month of work (a lot to do, not a lot of time) and to making the battery cables. At least most of them.

Here is the diagram of how they are going to be connected together. We measured the lengths of the runs we needed to make, at least for the ones we know the distances. We do not know the lengths of neither the cables that go under the car, from the rear battery box to the control box in the front and back nor the ones that go from the front batteries to the control box.

We got together at Danny’s house and got working. Making battery cables is easy, if you have the right tools and materials. We had:

- 2/0 welding cables (donated by Chuck at Dockside Power)
- Lugs (a.k.a. battery terminals) (donated by 3M, through our friend Jimmy Rodriguez at Fox Rowden)
- Black heat shrink (also by 3M)
- Red heat shrink (donated by Bill Naranjo, from Thomas and Betts)
- A good knife to strip the insulation
- Hand held, battery powered, hydraulic crimper, the Gator (on loan from Greenlee tools)
- A heat gun

With the help of Barbie we cut all the cables to the right length. We stripped the insulation to fit the lugs (length of the barrel + 1/2″) and put the lugs on the copper wire. Crimping the lugs (squeezing them on the cable) was very easy because we had the best tool for it. The Greenlee Gator crimper makes crimping those lugs on the cables a breeze. It is battery powered and hydraulic, so you just press the button and off it goes. Just don’t get your fingers (or any body part you mind loosing) caught in it. One day we’ll buy one of these, in the meantime, borrowing this one from Frank Manfredonia, from Greenlee, will do. Thanks, Frank!. After crimping, we just slid the heat shrink on the terminals and heated them with the heat gun. Done! we put red heat shrink one one end and black on the other to guide us through the battery connections.

We made the 7 wires that inter-connect the rear batteries and the 3 for the front ones. We’ll make the rest once we have the control box in.

Finally, we made a list of things left to do in the car…. wanna see it? click here