Update

Hi folks! It has been a very busy year teaching! We have made a great relationship with Nissan Design center of North America. Our crew was able to make a visit and see the process that a car design goes through up to production. Very inspiring!

We have sketched out the high voltage system and looking for a driver side location for the high voltage breaker switch. Since it is a sports car, it is a tight fit. We have cut out the entire trunk space and made mock up batteries. A wire frame model has been created and it looks like we have a perfect amount of space to place 8 batteries in the rear of the car. Just the right size! Fitting all of the controls and 8 more batteries under the hood, may be a greater challenge, but so far everything has been fitting perfectly, so I am optimistic. Our current challenge is welding the battery boxes together so that they fit and are strong enough to safely support 500 pounds of batteries! The school has purchased a welding unit thanks to Phil Wagner and his Robotics crew getting a very large grant. Great how things continue to work out for our efforts! We are aiming for showing it off at the Festival del Sol exhibition on April 7th. I think we can get everything up and working but may need to hold out for getting final funding for the batteries. Once again, I know it will work out!
I will try to keep this blog up to date more often.
Wishing you for clearer skies - Ted

Project Z update October 28, 2010

The beginning of the new year has been a busy one. The past summer had me doing summer school and helping my wife, Jill, recover from hip replacement surgery. So, we have not worked on the car until the beginning of the school year. So far, we are working on the battery racks and I am working with a friend, Matthew, who is a welder by trade, to build the racks and supports for the motor.

Students have built 16 cardboard mock up batteries to simulate where we will place those big suckers! 16 batteries is lots of batteries!

We have begun to layout the high voltage system. Part of the anxiety about it was looking at the amazing job that Operation Z did their car. However, after looking at the photos, we are saving lots of problems in not having air conditioning. More room and it is not that hard to develop the high voltage system. The 12 volt system will be more problematic, but I think we are up to it.

Lots to do but we are on our way.

Car is Painted and Shown at Gala!

We picked up the car from Styler's Auto Body shop and the car looked beautiful. We worked on the car cleaning it up and getting it ready for the "Faces of the Future" gala, which is an annual fund raiser and small exhibition of projects. Tally had spent lots of hours on making posters and putting together the media. Jimena has a great looking new "Los Rayos Engineering" logo that we are refining. This group of kiddos is awesome.
I was able to retrieve the completed motor to transmission, but I had a couple of things happen this week, so we were unable to try to put the motor into the car. We should be able to get some work done this coming Tuesday and the students are pretty excited about getting to the next step.
Let's see how this goes next week.

Update

I have been able to take the students to Styler's Body and Paint and have the students do some body work. The students were very interested in the process of filling in the dents, fixing areas and getting the car painted. It's quite a bit of work! I cannot thank Joey Reyes enough for painting the car!
We will be exhibiting the car next weekend, Saturday, May 22nd at the annual "Faces of the Future" Gala. It is a fundraiser for the school and they are looking forward to having the car there to display. We have recycled some old doors, painting them black and setting them up for a trade show display. The students are also going to mount a monitor onto the doors so that it can show a slide show and possibly some video. We have had a few good sessions planning out the display. Alex and Tally have been chosen to represent the project and they will do a good job presenting. Actually I would think that all of them would do a great job presenting.
The adapter plate is coming along although when we started to get it together, the ring spacer was about an inch to thin. Mr. Q had rigged up the motor and transmission with some extra long bolts to simulate what it would be like with the proper ring spacer. He had hooked up an 8 Volt battery and we put it into gear; it worked great! Hopefully, we can get the ring spacer made this week and put it all together next weekend. I will have to work with the students next Saturday in the morning to get ready for the Faces of the Future, so I may not have lots of time, but we will try to do what we can next weekend.
Hopefully the next time I update here, we will have a newly painted car!

Trip to Operation Z in Northridge

Our annual Team Vista trip to Magic Mountain was right on our way to view a 1975 280Z that had been converted already. I drove up with Jimena, Ashley, Shannon and Marcus. We took lots of pictures and the owner Joe Porcelli was great about showing all of the things he worked on to make it all work out. Dave was especially great about telling us about any questions we had about the challenges working on this particular car. The Z was beautiful and we were a bit intimidated by how great his car looked - we have lots of work to do! Deciding the size of batteries is the biggest challenge at the moment and lots depend upon what we decide to use as batteries. I had a thought about using LiFePo (Lithium Iron Phosphate) batteries (only $7500!) but maybe we could work something out with a dealer or the manufacturer itself. That would save lots on weight! Anyway, once we decide, we can move forward with designing everything to work with those batteries.

Adapter Plate Progress

The adapter plate has been moving forward quite well. Mr. Q from our Kick Gas Club has been awesome about helping me out with getting that taken care of. We worked together one Saturday to find the center spot on the bell housing profile (using a piece of card board!).

Q had the flywheel lightened and the ring gear removed. Once that was completed and the outer adapter plate was machined for the profile, we put everything together to see how it all fit. It looked beautiful! Next is to have the flywheel/pressure plate/clutch assembly put together and balanced (which is now complete).
I have already made the purchases of the motor and a good portion of the electronics. That should come in this week. Hopefully, next Saturday we will be able to put the motor and transmission together!

Updates and Styler's Auto Body

Well, it has been a long time since I have updated and logged the progress so far. First I have been able to deliver the car to Styler's Auto Body in National City for the auto body and paint. I can't say enough how great it is for Joey Reyes to hook us up for this gift! Since after spring break we had a chance to visit the shop and do a bit of body work with his resident expert, Enrique. Here is a photo of them getting taught a bit about bondo work. Enrique was great, putting each of them to work and showing them the processes for smoothing out small dings and such. He was a natural teacher and I was glad he was available to show them this process.