More Bits and Pieces.

I'm still fighting that blasted engine. According to the manual, it should just come out to the left now that all the mounting bolts are out and the sub-frame is off. It looks like it lacks about 1/8th of an inch to just fall out onto the floor, but I can't make it budge. One of the members of ST-Owners.com suggested that I may need to remove the swing arm to get the engine out. I was hoping to avoid that. If I don't get it out by the weekend, "Mellow" the admin of ST-Owners has volunteered to come give me a hand on Saturday. It turns out he is a local, and a really nice guy.

More stuff came in this week. I wasn't expecting it to show up so soon, but the AC-20 kit arrived at the Dallas Makerspace on Monday. Luckily one of the members happened to be there and was able to sign for it... I was still waiting for a tracking number from HPEVS and had no idea it had even shipped! Travis with Electro Motive Force was proactive on chasing down the package, HPEVS just dropped the ball on sending out the tracking info when they drop-shipped the motor.

That motor is a lot heavier than it looks. I knew it was over 50 pounds, but I was still surprised at how heavy it felt when I picked it up. The controller has a few scrapes on the plastic at the corners, and has a small chip on the plastic lip of the cable connector. It looks like it was maybe dropped before packing, the packing showed no signs of damage.

The Mean Well DC-DC converter also arrived. I'll need to fabricate some sort of cover for the terminal end.

The $38 Programmable Volt Meter from LightObject.com is an interesting little gadget that I heard about from Jack on EVTV. It has two programmable relays built in, and you can set a high/low voltage for each. With a suitable relay and resistor, it will make a dandy little cell balancer. They also have a Programmable Current Meter for the same price.