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.

Presentation at the Chula Vista Rotary meeting.

We made a visit to the local Rotary chapter meeting on Friday, March 26th. For our first presentation for Project Z, we did a great job! Here is a link to the newsletter with a write up of our presentation to the Chula Vista Rotary: http://staff.hthcv.hightechhigh.org/~tcuevas/hthcv/09-10/project_z/4-2-2010_chulatarian.pdf

Hopefully, it is the first of many presentations that the students will provide to the community about Project Z!

Car is being painted!

Well, we got the car to the auto body and paint garage, Styler's Auto Body and Paint in National City. Thanks to their sponsorship they are doing body work and giving it a paint job! Thanks to Joey Reyes (owner) for the awesome donation!

Took a look at the adapter plate last Saturday. Looks good so far although it looks like the flywheel is so heavy that it needs a bit of lightening. The distances between all of the parts is also an issue so we are not sure if further machining will be necessary. I hope not... I would much prefer having a clutch so that other people can drive it more easily. I feel pretty confident that it will all work out.

Still on Spring Break. Once we get the motor and connect everything together, then hopefully we can get the other electronics moving forward...