Out: Cooling System

Sunday, June 29, 2008 by EV Hacker

The engine cooling system, like much of the stuff you find in an ICE-powered vehicle, is there only to support the operation of the ICE and, therefore, not needed in an electric car. Since the air intake had already been removed, I had easy access to the cooling system components, so I spent part of the afternoon chucking the radiator, fans, coolant tank, hoses, and few brackets out of the engine bay. Even though I was armed with a service manual, I still thought I had to jump through way too many hoops to get it all out. The angle and placement of the radiator required the front sway bar to be dropped in order to allow the radiator to slide out from below the car. Coming from the Honda world, that's a little weird to me.



The Workspace

Tuesday, June 17, 2008 by EV Hacker

In my ideal world, I'd live in a 1 bedroom house with a 4 car garage. Unfortunately, my garage is in the real world and is at full capacity with two cars. So, I'm a bit short on space for the EV conversion unless I can find some space.

I ended up moving the RX-7 into the backyard to set up a temporary workspace for the conversion. Since it's not running, pushing the car was my only option. Every time I find myself in this situation, I'm quickly reminded how exhausting pushing a car, even on relatively flat surface, can be. And this reminded me of how inefficient the most common mode of transportation (cars and trucks) is in general: ~3000 lbs. of metal to move ~150 lbs. of human. With a 20X ratio, I wonder what we are more addicted to: oil or waste. At least this car's oil consumption days are long gone. It won't be wasting any energy anytime soon either, mostly due to it not going anywhere!

With the car in the backyard, the next task was to set up some sort of covered area to keep the summer sun off the car and to give me some shade. I constructed a semi-permanent canopy over the patio. Over the summer, it'll be my EV conversion workspace. Laissez les bon temps rouler!