May 9th - Vehicle arrived at work on truck
May 12th - 16th - Vision Week at work, put car in cafe, it was a hit, exec's came in from corporate
May 18th - Took car home
May 21st - First ride after tags and ins. Fun, lot's of it, top speed only 22mph, poss battery or cable issue
May 22nd - Seats will be done tommorow, very excited. I'm outta cash so the belts and bull bar will have to wait till next week. I dug the floor jack out of the shed. Gonna check those brakes.
May 23rd - Macco wanted $750 for the stripe job, sounds fine. I'll take her there when I get the $$$. Worked on the brakes too, seems residual pressure in the lie was causing the lockup on the FL brake. Seems o.k. now. did not test drive. Seats are done, i'm taking them home tonight to install over the weekend.
(here's a pic of the paint job i want)

Memorial Weekend - Went Great! I parked the Ram on friday with a 1/2 tank and over the course of the whole weekend I used about a 16th of a tank! INSANE! I would have burnt that all if not for the EV! Saturday I took my kid too the parade which she was in and they thought I was in it too with the car. We stopped and asked where the brownie troop was gathering and the lady told me my vehicle was prob after the vintage cars, I told her "this is my ride!" it was really funny. Anyway, I started the week off with 50 miles on the odometer and finished with 121 miles. Used it ALLOT! I got stopped many times by people asking details about the car. Most did not even realize they existed. One kid thought it was a prius, another lady stopped dead in the middle of the road in front of me and got out and came back talking too me about it waiving traffic on. I just wish Ford, GM or Chrysler would build one of these we all could buy. They could of course but for whatever reason they still won't. 
May 27th - After much thought I decieded to go with the safety / speed first. Gonna have to put off the ride pimping for now :') It's cool, prob the best choice.
June 11th - Car is inop now, pulled all the crappy small battery cables off for replacement with 2/0 cable, pulled the controller and bumped up the accel and PWM size (wooo hooo! more speed!) and broke the friggin F/R contactor :'( . Parts on order, might have her back up and running this weekend. Also, gonna see about getting a radio and some speakers and subs from the trade center too saturday.

I must say on a side note I am really getting pissed, Ford, GM and Chrysler seem to still be sitting on thier hands as far as the EV thing goes. I know GM is ahead of the pack but damn, ya know how you cringe when you see someone get hurt? that's how I feel about the big three. Everyday there is more and more news about EV startups and how progress is coming along in regards too range and battery technology. Even on Ebay there is 40,000 gas cars and less than 20 EV's! of the 20 EV's half of those are the friggin usless GEM cars that no one wants. I saw the RAV4 EV go a month ago for $89,000 and see 2 people have scrambled to capatilize on that sale by converting 2 ICE RAV4's to EV. Pretty sweet, hope they sell them high. It just brings to fruition the message too the big three that there IS a market for these and PEOPLE WANT THEM. I guess that's why i'm so pissed. Not because gas is $4+ but because people really DO want these and they don't seem too care. I drive mine all over town and get nothing but thumbs up's and can I check your car out. Yes, I know it's small and built like shit but the point is that it runs on BATTERIES! The damn thing does not even have a HEATER! As soon as I get these upgrades done i'm going to pop by a car show (one of the thousands downriver every weekend) as see what happens. I know everyone looking at these $20,000 to $50,000 classics are gonna come running over too check out my lil $5,000 piece o' poop just cause it's electric and that's cool, 1/2 the reason I bought this was so the engineers and the powers that be by my geographical location to the HEART of the auto world would see this and talk about it at work. The big 3 need too get up off thier asses and make these. Tommorow is not soon enough.  

July 9th - everything's been cool. Cars running great, still only getting about 36mph out of it (wind at your back and living your life right). charging about once every 5 days or so. inverter issue has been fixed. Just waiting on some money for the next step. I decieded to go with a controller upgrade next. I should prob be able to afford it in a week or two. I know the motor has too be getting near max as according to my calculations im at 2.4KW at a cruise, 8KW at 1/2 throttle and a whopping 13KW all full take off load. The motor is rated at 3KW which is not much but DC motors can take much more than rated as long as you don't overheat them. The motor never gets hot too the touch now so I figure i'm o.k. to step it up a bit. If it dies it's cool as I know it's underpowered anyway so why not throttle it like it's someone else's, hehehe.
I'm going to make the jump from my current Curtis 48 volt X 275 amp controller to the Logisystems 48 volt X 850 amp one. I know that will almost triple my output amperage too the motor so i'll compensate with the throttle. Now I just floor it most of the time when driving and only back off when 25mph is reached. I really REALLY want to get to 45 mph (well, 48 maybe) and if I mess with the current gear ratio without having the power too turn the wheels it's all for naught. The current acceleration is what I would call acceptable from 0 -25mph so i'll get the same top end or maybe a little bit more but will get there much much faster. Once I get that with the new controller i'll mess with the gearing / tires size to get the top speed right. I kinda sorta wanna stick with the current 48 volt system as I'm not ready too swap out the motor, controller, batteries, inverter and charger all at once. That'll be a HUGE job and HUGE money. I figure i'll try this first too see what happens. The controller is only $320. Personally, i'd rather go the higher voltage / lower amperage route as logic dictates in the big scheme of things but hey, we would all be driving Tesla's if money was no object. I'm just not ready to dump $3000+ into this thing and a soild month of work just yet when perhaps (and that's a big perhaps) a $320 controller and a possible cooling solution for the motor can give the same effect. As for the gearing my first step is too get some 13" rims (wow! 13" rims) with some sporty looking tires for the back, i'll get the matching one's up front but the wells in front will not afford me any extra room for much larger anything. The rears are important as I can change my ratio easy with the tires alone. I got a new insulator set for a Honda Prelude which fit my coils and raised it up a 1/2 inch. I'm going too get 4 more - (1 set for the front and 1 more to the tops of the rear coils) to raise the vehicle ride height to assist with the tires. Also planned is a set of air shocks for the back as the cheap chinese shocks don't yeald much ride quality. At the least I will get some good shocks going all the way around. If the tires don't get the 45 MPH target then i'll dive in head first and pull the rear axle/motor assembly and bench it. She sure sounds like a belt drive unit so i'll disassemble it and see if I can change the ratio that way. Moe in our maint dept at work is real handy, he can make a new drive pulley that's bigger i'm sure and take the rear down a little to adjust the final drive ratio. Anyway, that's what in my head right now. Funny that this motor attaches with 4 bolts and I bet I could have it out and on the bench in a half hour. The whole axle assembly would prob take me 2 hrs to have it totally out.
 
If this does all actually work the next step is the bull bar in the front for foot protection. At 45 mph hitting something would prob not be pretty so I will be beefing up the front. If someone rams me in the back I might go into someone too so I have to beef up the crash protection thing. One other thing I contemplated is adding a spare tire carrier too the back. She has no spare at all not that I really care but it would be good to have the extra protection of a rear mounted spare for a cushion. the back of the car has some braces internally welded that I can attach a bracket too. I'd mount a front tire as the spare as I could use it on the front or rear to limp home. If I used a back tire then it would only work as a rear. having done all these things i'd feel allot better about an accident.  

July 31 - Ordered Logisys 700 amp controller. Geeked about installing it. Sold my 275 amp controller. I'm thinking the 700 amp controller should bump my speed up to 40+ MPH and acceleration 2 fold min. It will be here monday and I will install and comment on it here. Also arrived is some suspension parts. I bought 2 X 1" spacers for the rear end (too fit the 13" tires) and 1 X 1" for the front. I think i'll run 12" in the front just because fitting a 13" rim / tire in there will be tough. Wide 13"'s on the back should make it look good. This Sunday I will be installing the spacers and the new control arm bushings which did not last at all. I got some nice new poly one's for a honda prelude that are a perfect fit for it. I'll also have to put locktite and a locknut on the bolts as they already backed off twice and that is not good. I'm going to install some wiring shields on the wires too the motor and rear to protect it from rubbing. There's some rubbing going on with all these 02 cables running everywhere and I want too make sure i don't have to worry about grounding going on. If this pans out speed-wise i'll get the Bull Bar next so I can go on the 35 - 45 mph roads. I'm also thinking of side bars too. Every bit of protection can't hurt. By the way, the person that made the comment to the 7-11 worker about me putting them out of a job, here's my comment on that. if it were gas powered i'd prob deserve that comment, however (and that's a big friggin HOWEVER) this is Electric, something that the big 3 don't even make for whatever reason. I asked them, of how I asked them to make an electric car, but my many emails went by the wayside with them. The real irony in this is that the Controller and Motor are made right here in the states! Yes, 2 of 3 major items that move this thing down the road are made right here in the States! thye bought them right off the shelf, built a friggin car around it (albiet it is not of any quality you get here) and sold them back too us! How's that for friggin ingenuity! You gotta give them that, why we don't have the balls for that here I do not know. It may be a half assed attempt but it is an ATTEMPT. if the big three falters god forbid, it will be of thier own doing, or failure to respond to a changing (or emerging) market. I buy American as much as I can, prob more so than you! Feel free to stop by or email if you want to comment more.