More Progress...old pics and new...

Okay, there's been good amount of progress. First pics showing the POR15 paint job I did on the interior, painting over the welded patch of floor pan, and various parts of the floor pan. The POR (paint over rust)15 is this noxious paint, that turns into a hard shell after painting (and using the prep products as well). But it keeps the rust away and gives a nice glossy finish. I got this in some strange places (face, inner thigh, back of knee...i have no idea.) I painted the e-brake boot as well. It's the original and was pretty stained up, so I tried using the POR on it. Turned out pretty well.

And here we have the same areas after we laid down some sound dampening material. Got it at SecondSkinAudio from Arizona. When I say we, I mean me, my dad and my kids. They enjoyed using the rollers on the material to help stick it to the floors/walls. When it's time to put the carpet in, I'll put a layer of heat insulation on top of this stuff which should allow for some cushioning as well.

At this point i'm feeling WAY too lazy to match up my text with the pictures. I've been writing html for over 10 years, and the blogger interface makes it pretty hard to get this to work correctly.

Anyhow, you'll also see my first succesfully created 2/0 connector wire. That's the big thick wire with fat connectors on the end. There's a photo of the 2/0 wire cutters, along with the crimping tool and a small cut of the 2 ought gauge wire. That crimping tool needs more than a standard hammer. I could crimp succesfully by slugging it with a 3 lb sledge hammer, about 5-6 times. When that was waking my son during naptime, I switched to the more passive vise. I liked the vise better. I just put that entire crimping tool in the vise with the wire and connector and crimped it right down. Then put the heatshrink tubing over the connection, and shrunk it down. It's quite the heavy duty heat shrink, and becomes about 1/8" thick once shrunk down.

You'll also see the test battery boxes made from cardboard to get the best idea for a box fit. We went thru a few different ideas with cardboard until I settled on the red one you see.  It's made of plywood, but then I glued thin sheets of polyethylene plastic around it to protect the box from potential water spillage/battery acid.

You'll see the front area here, where the gas tank used to be, and then my test cardboard boxes to see if the batteries would fit. It looks like the middle battery would be too high, but we put the bonnet back on (hood, but on a VW it's a trunk), and check the height. Plenty of room.

There's the area under the deck lid in back, where you can see the transmission, and then the 4 brackets I made for my component board. Then there's a photo of the board setting on those brackets. And then another one of the board, mostly wired up, sitting in there again. Today I got the final 2/0 wiring done on the board, but there's no pic of that yet. I also installed the pot box just above the component board. Then I ran 6 lines of 14 gauge wire from the component board area, thru the passenger area up to the hood area, mostly for the meters, but 2 extra, in case i need them. 

The discerning reader will notice that the components have been moved around a bit since I wired them. 

You may notice the 2/0 wire that's housed inside the clear pvc tubing, it runs under the car. Pops up into the hood area, and back into the deck lid area. Before I put the sound dampening material on the floor, we had run some small nuts/bolts thru the floor to attach some supports that hold the 2/0 under the car at about every 15" or so. 

Also, how's that re-upholstered front seat look? There's two of them done, and I still have to do the back bench seat. 

I got the carpet, carpet glue and headliner. Not sure when I'll start that. I think I'll go for finishing all the electric insides first, and then get into finishing the interior. I still have to bleed the brakes with new fluid and add tranny fluid (yes, 'tranny fluid'). 

I also have to re-do the doors. I have all the door rubber, etc, but again, I'll save it until I get it running with the electric gear.

Last picture there is the sad state of rims/tires. I'll be taking them to get the tires pulled off this week (tires are bad), and get the rims sandblasted. Then I'll pain the rims, get some new tires put on and I plan on painting on the white walls. I'll try that, with the Ranger paint I got, which was designed for tires. We'll see how it works. Being that it's an electric car, I couldn't use the non-radial tires, and white walls only come in the bias tires. 

Hopefully next week we get the adaptor plate on and attach the motor...