While it’s cold and dark and I’m waiting for access to the garage I’ve been working on some interior bits, starting with creating space for a double din head unit and hence relocating the heater controls. Continue reading Fitting a double-din head unit to the Z3 centre console (part 1)
tl;dr: the car has passed its MOT! We are now the proud, grin-wearing owners of a road-legal, home-made, fully-electric vehicle. Continue reading Rollercoaster
About 12 years ago the start-up I co-founded joined an accelerator programme. One of my takeaways from my time spent there (I was still running another business) was the phrase “JFDI”, short for “Just f***ing do it.” I think it is fair to say I have reached the JFDI stage on this project. In April we are getting a load of building work done. This … Continue reading JFDI
It has been a while since my last update. My inverter control board was off getting repaired, the cold weather, rain and snow made outdoor work either unsafe or unappealing, and right up until the break I was buried with work. But getting there again now. With everything else ruled out I decided to focus on my battery pack and charging. If you’ve been following … Continue reading Charging ahead
It turns out that the inverter board failing and me smoking some components (see last installment) was just the beginning of a week of technological disasters for me. My broadband router failed, wiping out a morning while I tried to cobble together a working arrangement until I could get hold of a replacement. In the middle of that, my web server (actually a virtual instance) … Continue reading Rebuilding enthusiasm
So, I’ve now ruled out human error on the inverter control board. I sent it across to a fellow OpenInverter forum member on the wrong side of the Pennines and he dropped it into his working setup. Sure enough, the DC supply voltage was all over the place. He’s kindly trying to work out why now. In the meantime, we’re cracking on. We’re making progress … Continue reading Pedal to the…plastic?
There was one electrical job left on the car that I could do while waiting for the builders to finish and clear the driveway, and for the electronics engineers I had contacted about fixing the inverter control board to get back to me. The driver’s seat has both electric slide and tilt, in theory. But only the slide was working. Hit the switch for the … Continue reading Tilt and slide – fixing the driver’s seat
We’ve now fixed the main issues with the car itself. Like the power hood, the central locking just seemed to be bad earth/connection issue. Once I stripped off the actuator, greased it and put it back together, it worked fine. We picked up a second hand driver’s door mirror from the ZRoadster forum and fitted that. Not as cheap a job as I was hoping … Continue reading Central locking and wing mirror sorted
So, one of the first things to tackle on the car was the electric hood, which the previous owners had told us was broken. Sure enough when we first tried it we heard clicking but there was no movement. My initial diagnosis (fuse, ground etc) was rather undermined by my not understanding the process you had to go through to make the hood work: ignition … Continue reading Fixing the electric hood
