Friday, October 31, 2008

Sending Pieces off to Powder-Coat

Last night I disassembled all the battery racks and gathered the pieces in the living room to get ready for powder-coating.


Here are all the steel angle-iron and bar-stock pieces in their approximate battery rack groups (39 pieces in all). I put them in the plastic bin to the left and drove them over to Class Act Powder Coating for powder-coating. For $100 they're going to sandblast all the paint and oxidation off and coat the pieces with epoxy to prevent rust and acid damage.

While it may not seem like much, the above picture represents several months of trial-and-error design work to fit twleve group-31 batteries into the limited space of the Honda Civic. I'm looking forward to the mechanical design being finished so I can focus on the electrical design, which is much more up my alley.

Here's the rundown of pieces:

Rear Rack:
2 square tubes
2 angle irons (notches on outside)
2 angle hold-downs with notches
2 bar hold-downs

Front Rack:
2 short angle irons
2 long angle irons
2 bars
1 short wide angle iron
2 angle hold-downs
2 bar hold downs

Firewall Rack:
4 short bars (notches start at driver, clockwise)
2 side angle iron
4 horizontal angle iron
2 support angle iron
2 side hold-down bars
2 angle hold-downs
2 hold-down spacers

Motor Mount:
1 heavy short angle iron
1 end plate

Happy Halloween everyone!
Tim

2 comments:

David Carlson said...

Tim- Since our trip to Eugene with Andrew I've been following your posts off and on and it looks like things are really coming together. A couple of questions- How much range to you expect to get out of this when you're done and how are you planning on dealing with the heater/defroster issue? I'm thinking that the hairdryer wouldn't be as elegant a solution as with the 914...

TimK said...

Realistically, I expect to get 35-40 miles of range given the lead-acid batteries, but we'll see. For now, I haven't tackled the heater issue yet. I'll probably wear heavy sweaters in the wintertime and use the unheated fan to defog the windshield until I figure out a better solution.