As we were never able to go to the meetings up in Boca, we decided to open a FLEAA chapter in Miami!
The 1st Meeting of the FLEAA-Miami Chapter will be this Monday April 20th at 7:30 pm.   We are meeting at Casola Pizza 2437 SW 17th Ave, Miami, FL‎.   It is an ideal location, as it is close to downtown, Coconut Grove, Miami Beach, Little Havana Key Biscayne, and Coral Gables.  And almost everyone will be coming from a location that is against the afternoon traffic rush.  Plus, they have good pizza slices.
Agenda
1.  What is the Florida EAA?
Who we are?
What we do?
Why you should get involved/support?
2.  Upcoming Events in the Miami area
Miami Going Green Parade - 7 EV from FLEAA will participate
Recap of Earth Day at Crandon Park
Miami Going Green -Earth Day festival on Saturday, April 25
3.  Resources for going electric
conversion shops
charging stations
alternate electric vehicles
Upcoming production EV and plug-in Hybrids
Hope to see you all there! Need directions? click HERE!
On Saturday April 25, 2009, Miami’s Bayfront Park will serve as the perfect backdrop for Miami Goin’ Green – an exciting eco-friendly event that’s fun for the entire family! The Green Movement is long overdue in South Florida, but has started to make its mark with companies and individuals everywhere trying to lead a more sustainable lifestyle.
The event will operate on 100% alternative fuel with solar-power and bio-diesel generators. Recycling stations throughout the park will be manned by our “Green Team” to help educate visitors on how to properly recycle and dispose of their waste. In addition to traditional recycling, there will also be Tech-Recycling stations to collect unused tech items such as old batteries, cell phones, computers and monitors.
On Earth Day, April 22nd, the Wednesday before the big event, we are organizing a big 6 mile caravan of electric and alternative fuel vehicles to attempt to break the Guinness World Record for the largest all alternative fuel vehicle procession. If your vehicle is clean, then come on board! more info HERE
The route will start at Bayfront Park in downtown Miami, run down Biscayne Boulevard, then historic Brickell and Bayshore Drives, and end in Commodore Plaza in the heart of Coconut Grove.
Each participant in the event will receive a free t-shirt and Official Certificate showing their participation in the World Record.
Come and participate on the caravan and come over for the weekend to see the cars! Hope to see you there!
What an excellent event! We are very happy and honored to receive these two awards. We want to thank all our sponsors for all the support, all our friends for all the help, and the Florida Electric Auto Association for having this wonderful event and for recognizing all our efforts.
The MEVP1 “the Buzz” and MEVP2 “New Lectric Leopard” were representing the Miami EV Project among 70 electric vehicles during this year’s event. The two days consisted of “Show and Shine” competitions, acceleration tests, autocross races and electrathon. We met some really interesting people and many many experts that gaves us excellent advise and helped us perform the best we could in the races! Thanks!!!
Here is a video of danny putting the MEVP1 to the test in the Autocross track, our best time was 33.05 (Danny was driving), which put us on 5th place… not bad for the first time running the car!
Also, here are some pictures of other electric cars and hybrids that participated in the event!
We got a flat tire at the end of the first test drive. However, Rick saved the day! He came with his fryer oil powered truck (he makes his own bio-diesel) and fixed our flat tire. And yes, the truck smelled like french fries… THANKS RICK! he also let us ride his electric scooter… barbie almost kills herself with it hahaha. Azul and Danny got a hang of it.
Well, it’s been a while since our last post. We are happy to report that we have been spending a lot of time riding the car (MEVP1) and working little kinks out. Also, we finished Azul’s car upgrade (MEVP2). He even re-did the interior and now the Lectric Leopard look AWESOME! (we’ll post the whole process soon). Both cars are working great and getting ready to go to this weekend’s EV conference in Jupiter, FL. Hope to see you all there. Click HERE for info on the event.
In the past few weeks we have been working on some of the kinks of the MEVP1, such as transmission problems, details of the rear battery box, wiring the PakTrakr battery monitoring system, finsihed details on the exterior wrap, did balancing and alignnement, we had a battery terminal break off, so we fixed it, we wired the rear battery box fan (which sounds like a vacuum cleaner), and a bunch of other things. Here are some pics…
We are still tuning the PakTrakr and the charger, so we get some crazy readings sometimes… normal charge 144V but 0% Full and still running was funny…
Driving through downtown Miami and a picture with our cool, non electric neighbor…
Moving forward, now that the MEVP is practically finished, we are working on upgrading Azul’s car. His car is a 1980 Renault LeCar, also known as “The Lectric Leopard”, whch is an early production electric car, converted by U.S. ElectriCar, Athol, MA. This car never had a gasoline engine, so it can be considered a true EV.
From the factory, this car has a Prestolite MTA-4001 Series Wound DC motor driving the original 4-speed manual tranny and has no Controller. It actually has a 2-step contactor (24/48 Volt). It’s powered by 16 6 Volt, Flooded lead-acid batteries, for a total system Voltage of 48 Volts. The charger is the original 110 VAC 48 VDC with manual timer. Very cool old stuff and it all works. He gets good range (50 miles, but he has done up to 60) but it need more power to safely ride Miami’s highways…. that means without getting rear ended.
This is a really cool car, and Azul has restored it to a near mint condition. He helped us A LOT in the development of the MEVP1, so now we are helping him upgrade his car. We are going to advance the motor to put more voltage though it, put a new battery setup, a Curtis controller, pot box, new charger, DC-DC converter and a new vacuum pump. This is going to be a cool restoration/update project.
