EV Pusher Project

Archive page two

 

January 31, 2001. A new page for a new month (February). I'm working on completing the installation of the AC generator before I start on the towing tongue and cut the car down the middle. It seems to be a lot easier to reach the engine compartment without having to lean over a bunch of hardware attached to the front of the car, and this generator is damned heavy, clumsy to handle, and is requiring a lot of effort to make fit into the engine compartment.

Today, I decided on a mounting bracket configuration, and began construction on it. I have a lot of welding and small fabrication to do, but it should be pretty much done within a day or two. I still need to move the radiator about ¾" towards the driver's side of the car. Doesn't sound like much, but I am out of room, and running into obstructions. I did think about taking the radiator to the shop and having it cut down an inch, but that would be, well, expen$ive!!!

Feb 3rd. Today was a complete wash-out as far as the weather goes, but yesterday, I purchased 15' of 2"x3/16" steel box tubing and a trailer coupler fitting so I can begin construction on the tongue. Also picked up some fasteners, and traded a full tank of argon gas that I purchased a couple of years ago to weld aluminum for a tank of 'Cougar', which is a 25-75% mixture of CO² and argon. Using this instead of straight CO² will improve the quality of my welds, and make welding thin steel much easier. While at the welding supply store, I also got a fresh tank of acetylene for the gas torch.

Evening yesterday, I converted my drill press (such a handy tool!) into a light-duty milling machine to make some needed modifications of an aluminum fan spacer that I will use to mount the second pulley on the crankshaft for the generator belt to run in.

Today I mostly just cleaned house and cleaned the Crown (see elsewhere on the site), which I have been using as a workshop for the last two months while working on the pusher. This evening I used the on-line ordering feature at Jameco Electronics to order a ball bearing servo motor to use to remotely control the engine throttle on the trailer. Now I won't have to use a piece of string tied to the injection pump like I was planning. To finish up the day, poked around on the 'net and learned more about servo motors and how to control them. It's soooo simple when you're exceptionally intelligent like I am!!

 

 

Feb 8th. The first meeting of electric and diesel. The much-anticipated snow storm didn't happen today, and in fact, it didn't even rain until late afternoon, so I got out and flushed the cooling system on the pusher so I could put in some anti-freeze and stop fooling around draining the radiator after each time I ran it. (Oh yes, the radiator is installed now, I spent yesterday constructing custom mounts and carving up 5 radiator hoses and reassembling the pieces to connect the radiator to the engine.)

Since it was required to run the engine up to operating temperature three times to flush, rinse and mix the antifreeze compound, I decided to use some of the available power to charge up the EV using the now fully installed AC generator on the engine. The results were mixed. The on-board charger on the Rabbit requires line frequency to be pretty close to 60 Hertz to operate. When I tried to set the speed of the diesel to give me that output from the generator, the engine would kind of "avalanche" past where I wanted it to run, revving too high for the charger to work. Not sure what that's about, might be normal, or I still might need an injection pump. I'm considering other options, such as converting the AC to DC so that the frequency is irrelevant. The batteries want DC anyway, so why stress the small stuff?

Before going in for the evening, I built a small electronic circuit to test the servo mechanism that I intend to use to actuate the throttle. It worked well enough for a test. In the next few days, I'll create a more sophisticated PWM circuit to try.

 

Feb 11th. Now I'm learning robotics. In order to make the throttle work, I'm designing circuits from scratch to have the attributes necessary to adapt the RC model servo mechanism to properly actuate the accelerator lever on the diesel injection pump. In this image, the custom circuit on the prototyping board at the middle is sending the servo (bottom right, with the round white wheel) a pulsed signal corresponding with a position of approximately 45° from the at-rest position. The servo is connected to a spring scale, which is indicating about 4 pounds of thrust, which is about what the diesel injection pump lever requires to move. The digital meter indicates a servo current of 0.33 amps, or about 2 watts at 6 volts, not a lot. I let the servo hold this thrust for about a half an hour to see it anything got hot, fried, or failed. Looks like this servo can easily pull 8 pounds, and as much as 10.

At right is the face of the oscilloscope, showing the pulse waveform, and the frequency counter, which indicates that the pulses are occurring every 16ms, or at 60 Hz. To change the position of the servo wheel, the circuit changes the ratio of on-to-off as shown on the 'scope screen. The original purpose of the integrated circuit I am using is as a switching power supply driver, but it makes a dandy pulse width modulator as well.

Not shown here is the work I did Friday and Saturday, cutting out the pieces and beginning to weld up the towing tongue that will be mounted in the front of the remainder of the car. More on that when the weather improves. Working outside with cold steel when it's 35° F and drizzling rain isn't my idea of a pleasant Sunday afternoon.

 

 

Feb 13th. As the Klingons say, "Today is a good day to weld", or at least better than yesterday. I thought that laying some beads down on the thick metal of the towing tongue would be a piece of cake, but when I tried to assemble the pieces, I had nothing but trouble. Adjusting the wire speed, current, gas flow, and technique yielded little improvement. All of the welds penetrated the base metal OK, but the appearance was totally unacceptable, they looked like an amateur had gotten a hold of a wire feed and went nuts. I ground down the ugly welds, and today used my reliable old stick welder to go over the joints to improve the appearance and fill in the shallow beads. Of course, stick welding leaves it's own imperfections, like spatter and slag, so now I have still more grinding and wire brushing to clean things up a bit.

Valentine's Day. And what better way to say "I love you" than with a spray gun? In spite of being basically out-of-commission with some dreaded virus, I pressed on and finished the welding and grinding, then laid on a coat of red oxide primer-sealer. So now this part of the project is done, it just needs to be bolted in place.

I think I figured out why my welds with the wire feed were so bad a few days back. I'm pretty sure I must have gotten a contaminated tank of gas. When I switched back to pure CO², all of the problems disappeared. Wish I'd tried that before I was doing the last several welds.

Feb 15th. I am so sick, even my hair hurts. Didn't get very much done, as I felt like trash. In what few minutes I was able to work, I managed to disconnect the exhaust system, and pull out all of the fuel lines in preparation for the big cut. Just before crapping out in the afternoon, I did some small stuff to prepare the servo to be attached to the accelerator cable. Uhg. Off to bed....

Feb 18th. Uh oh, this project has been discovered by the EV community. Now the heat will be on to actually finish it and make it work.

 

Tomorrow, I'll begin the quest to gather parts for some kind of device to actuate the clutch. I only need to move the lever on the transmission 1½", but the maximum thrust is 80 pounds, so It's got to be something strong. I'm inclined to use the windshield wiper motor and gearbox for power, perhaps with a lead screw to take up the lever. I'll look for garage door openers at the salvage building materials yard, they should prove to have some interesting mechanical parts inside, limit switches, lead screws, gear, chain, and belt speed reduction stuff, etc. Maybe I can get the whole pusher to work off of a 'clicker', so I don't have to run wires!!

 

Hey! What kind of a Pusher update is this??? Feb 22nd. Part of the reason for little progress on the trailer is that most every spare minute I've had for the last four days was spent either trying to get caught up with work for clients, or completing the installation of this Tachyon.net satellite earth station which gives me wireless 2Mb/sec download speed. Here, the L-band antenna is set up on a temporary stand behind the Crown as a test to see if my site can receive the satellite signal, prior to mounting the hardware permanently. Now I can download files from the net at amazingly fast speeds, and even listen to web radio without interruptions in the audio stream. I probably have the world's only Housetruck satellite uplink in existence!

Progress on the Pusher will resume soon. My trip to the salvage yard was delayed until Tuesday, due to Abe and George's birthdays. Once there, I looked over about 10 cast-off garage door openers, looking for useable parts. The openers were of two types, chain drive, and lead screw drives. The chain drive units might have yielded some useable hardware, but they were pretty rudimentary, with large v-belt pulleys, or proprietary worm-drive transmissions coupled to hefty synchronous AC motors. The screw type were all direct-drive, with specialized sealed motors. None of them looked like something I could hack into something more useful.

I decided that I could probably do better with something else, and on the way out, happened to notice an old scissors-type auto jack laying on a shelf. It had a lead screw with matching nut, a thrust bearing, and only cost $2. In the next day or two, I'll see what kind of mischief I can get into with a grinder and saw to make this work as a clutch driver.

 

 

You know the old saying, "Half a Rabbit is better than one".... Feb 25th. I didn't really set out this morning to do the cutting thing, but about 4:30PM, it was obvious that the time had come. Spent some of the morning installing the limit switches on the clutch throwout mechanism, then installed the towing tongue after lunch. Some disappointment there, I thought that I had accounted for the angle of the car and tongue, but apparently not, as the tongue is about 3½" too high in the front. This is visible in the image above. Once again, there is no substitute for working on a level concrete surface. One day I'll have a nice drive-in shop so I can be warm too! Anyway, this problem can be fixed, I just have to block up the trailer (I can call it that now), remove the tongue, radiator, alternator, and AC generator to give me some elbow room, then make the mounting holes in the frame elliptical using a rotary file and drill motor. As I say, disappointing, because if I had been able to measure this before building the tongue, I could have simply offset the mounting holes in the tongue when I drilled them. Ach, live and learn.

For the record, and in case anybody cares, it took 20 minutes to cut the car in two, including some time fiddling with the saw after the blade came off. I knew it couldn't be too hard, after all, I cut a 40' bus in two the long way! That was difficult!

For now, the rear of the trailer is longer than it will be when finished. I wanted to have some fudge factor when I begin gluing the back end of the car onto the shortened front.

Feb 26th. I guess that the big news of the day is that the hard disk in my computer crashed after breakfast. I've spent a couple of hours recovering data not contained on the latest backup CD-ROM, but it looks like I'm going to have some important stuff that won't be recoverable. I'm updating here using my old 486/33 laptop with a monochrome display, hand editing the page in Notepad+, so don't look for any fancy stuff until I get a new drive and have all of my programs loaded and ready to go.

 

I did work on the trailer today, pulling it out into the driveway and doing some alignment, using some 2 x 4's, a straight edge and tape measure, before locking the steering rack into a straight-ahead position. Also removed the heater assembly, pedals, steering column and some superfluous brackets from the under-dash area.

 

March3rd. It's been an intensive week. Aside from purchasing and installing a new 30 Gb hard drive, and then reloading all of my programs, retrieving files and restoring from back up CD-ROM disks, I also managed to work on the pusher some as well. Now that I have Front Page 2000, Phototshop 5.5, and the drivers for the memory card reader of my digital camera installed and working, I can go back and add some images to the week's work.

 

 

This was the scene on Wednesday the 28th. After spending the previous afternoon installing the original muffler in the space provided by the 'hump' between the seats and running the short exhaust pipe out the center of the floor pan, I was able to start the engine for the first time in a while. This explains the fuel container on the floor section. The project in the afternoon was to install the salvaged towing hitch to the rear of the EV, which was a fairly simple no-brainer, drill some homes and insert the 7/16" bolts, tighten to almost breaking. Now the problem with the towing tongue is fairly obvious, the tail of the pusher is way in the air compared to the EV's angle. The remnants of the back of the car look like some ramshackle bum's shelter, covered with tarps and plastic. Can't wait to saw it into manageable pieces, cull out the useable parts, and haul it off to be recycled!

Today was a fairly low-level Saturday. Went out to check out a new job installing wiring at a tropical fish store, ate lunch, took a nap (yawn), and worked a little more on the controller for the trailer, at least the prototype that I'll use to test it with. As I build the electrics, I expand the project with ideas and enhancements, and have to keep in mind that the complexity of the controller changes when there is an automatic transmission in the final (?) product. For now, the controller will supply ignition (injection pump fuel solenoid), monitor alternator and oil pressure idiot lights, and control the clutch in/out. Future enhancements will include starter, fuel gauge, water temperature gauge, glow plug control and maybe radiator fan manual switch. Important safety features including throttle defeat, deadman interlock, breakaway kill, and more will be needed in the final controller.

No promises, but I hope to have everything ready for a road test by next weekend. I have the controller to finish, installing the PWM circuit for the throttle servo, stop, tail and turn lights to install, and a head unit that installs in the EV, so I can control the throttle and clutch from the driver's seat. Sunday morning should be a nice, quiet time to have some space to myself on the highway, so that's what I'm shooting for. We'll see what the next week will bring. First the flu, then a hard drive crash, what's next, an earthquake?

 

 

March 7th. Question: "Say, isn't that a Skil© Xtra-tool hammer-chisel-drill in your engine compartment?" Answer: "Oh you recognized it..."

Once I had the lead screw and bearing installed on the clutch arm, the 13/16" hex nut on the end was a convenient way of running the screw in and out. I finally decided that a drill motor would be the easiest power source to adapt to working it on the finished trailer. Since I had this drill motor under the workbench, awaiting a new variable speed trigger (waiting for the last 12 years, it seems), I decided to just use it in the car, mounting it on an aluminum bracket, and coupling it to the lead screw via a spare spark plug socket from the tool box. Using this motor means that I will need 110 volts AC on the trailer to operate the clutch. Since I have a few spare DC-to-AC inverters laying around, this isn't going to prove to be much of a problem.

It was one of those two-steps-forward-one-step-back, two-steps-forward-three-steps-back type of days. Trying to run the drill motor from the controller didn't work, and I ended up having to replace two defective relays in the controller. These things happen when you build projects out of junk box parts. Then, as I was demonstrating the drill motor clutch actuator to a visitor, the clutch arm traveled a bit past where it should have stopped, and broke the lever arm off of one of the limit switches that senses where the clutch arm position is. This resulted in a complete redesigning of the limit switch assembly, a project for construction tomorrow...

Almost another week of work on the trailer, but a week of no updates.

March 12th. No I didn't get the pusher out on the road last weekend. After repairing the clutch limit switches, I needed to insert some speed control in the release motion of the drill motor, so I shredded a lamp dimmer and inserted it into the controller. After that, I tried the system on a 300 watt inverter that I had lying about. Worked fine on the "disengage" cycle (full drill motor power), but the inverter didn't sense a load through the dimmer module for the "engage" cycle, so I had to insert a time-delay relay into the circuit to give the motor full power for about ½ second when the "engage" command is given. After the time-delay relay releases, the motor goes to lower speed. so as to not over-travel at the end of the clutch arm's limit. Whew, one less problem, or one more problem I wouldn't have if I had an automatic transmission.

 

Yesterday, I began construction on the control head that will mount in the EV so I can ride herd on the controller's actions back in the trailer. Worked out a few bugs, such as the ignition being back-fed through the alternator warning lamp, resulting in no way to shut down the engine once it was started.

The three colored lamps are: green: glow plug activity, yellow: alternator warning lamp, red: oil pressure warning lamp. The red lamp will also have a second function, which is to flash when the throttle servo circuit is in "fault mode", which occurs when the EV's brake lights come on, or the trailer's clutch is disengaged without the servo being returned to "idle" beforehand. Just a little safety interlock to prevent accidents and engine overspeed.

The controller itself is gaining in complexity with the additional circuitry required to support the requirements and features I'm building into the system.

 

 

Just a quick little update, Mar 14th. An inside view of the controller head, with the PWM circuit installed. Only about an afternoon's worth of stuff stands between me and a road test now. I need to make an extension cable for the controller head, so I can operate it from inside the EV, there's still a short cable from the controller to the servo to be made, and I have to get some tail/stop/turn lights on the trailer so it will be highway legal.

March 22nd. Everything is ready for the test drive. I completed the control head and extension cable, installed trailer lights, hooked up the inverter, and even used some leftover aluminum from the ceiling of the bus to make a teardrop enclosure to conceal the battery and fuel container. This cover will be replaced by parts of the original sheet metal from the donor car, but for now, it was quick and easy to smack this in place using a couple of sheet metal screws.

 

 

I did tow the pusher out on the road today as a test. No power, the engine was off and in neutral, but I wanted to see what the general response of the front clip was to being hauled around. Got it up to 40 MPH on some smooth pavement, and basically couldn't tell it was back there once I was at speed. Of course, the car was a little less peppy (well, I guess it would have to be "peppy" in the first place to be less so) and I used about 20% more power from the batteries than I would have without the trailer along for the ride. No matter on that, the point is to use the diesel for power, it's not like I'm going to tow it all around town each and every time I go out on an errand. That's the point of building it into a trailer, it can be disconnected and left at home when not needed.

The fuel container is topped up with diesel salvaged from the tank in the car, all of the electrical connections are done, and now I just have to hope for a sunny weekend morning so I can get out on the road and try it out. More about that when the saga continues.

 

 

EV Pusher Project

Archive page Three

 

What? No Photo???

 

March 23, 2001. A red-letter Friday. Not content with the weather forecast for the weekend ("showers likely"), I decided to try out the pusher on nearby residential streets in second and third gear. It must have been quite a sight, as I turned many heads while billowing huge clouds of blue smoke until the engine got warm and all of the unburned fuel from many failed stating attempts in the past burned out of the muffler!

From what I could tell, there isn't much of an affect on the EV when the clutch engages on the pusher, you can just feel a little surge in the car's motion. Cranking open the throttle then causes the diesel to begin pushing, and I can watch the EV's ammeter drop, then go into regenerative braking as the car picks up speed. Of course, 2nd and 3rd gear on the pusher is only about 25 and 40 MPH, respectively at moderate RPM's, but this was enough for residential streets with cross traffic and pedestrians.

From this test, I have concluded so far that it's possible to engage and disengage the clutch without causing the car to lurch, lag or leap, and the acceleration seemed to be smooth and progressive, same with deceleration. At 40MPH on fairly straight smooth pavement, there was no discernable affect on the EV's steering or handling. In fact, it didn't feel any different from when the car is being driven by the electric motor, except for the eerie feeling of being under power while holding the clutch (on the EV) to the floor. There wasn't even very much engine noise that I could hear, but then I was pretty busy making sure that I wasn't going to drive right up the back of the car in front of me in case it slowed unexpectedly.

I do have some small fix-ups, there are a couple of minor coolant leaks, and I couldn't find any sticky- back Velcro to attach the controller to the dashboard. The clutch actuator switch is exactly backwards of what is intuitive, up is disengage, and down is engage. I'll fix that before I take the pusher out next time.

Next step... If it doesn't rain all weekend, I'll put the pusher in fourth gear and get up on the freeway, and open this baby up! 65MPH, here I come!!!

 

 

Mar 24th. In spite of forecasts for rain, and a few sprinkles on the windshield, I decided I couldn't resist getting the pusher out on the open road in fourth gear for a real test. Headed out of town on River Road, past the last of the condos and into fertile farmland and past rural produce stands, such as the quaint scene above.

What I found was that I could engage the pusher clutch at any speed over about 20, and accelerate from there, with or without significant assistance from the electric drive motor in the EV.

On the way north (out of town), I ran the car and pusher as a parallel hybrid, that is, both the diesel and electric motors engaged and driving the car forward. As I was stuck behind some slow (45MPH) traffic, I busied myself with experimenting with the throttle control on the pusher, trying combinations of diesel and EV power. The various combinations include: using partial electric and diesel power; diesel power alone by backing off the EV throttle until the E-meter showed 0 amps, with the diesel throttle set to the speed I wanted; and battery charge mode, accomplished by setting the diesel throttle higher than needed to hold the speed, and then backing off on the EV throttle even more, so that it went into regenerative braking.

I stopped at the railroad bridges near the end of Love Lake Road to check the diesel, investigate a slightly hot odor I detected, and turn around. Never did find out what the odor was. It might be from the Rabbit's fuel gauge, which I am using as a temperature gauge for the diesel. This hasn't worked as a battery state-of-charge indicator since I've had the car, so maybe it just needed to burn out some spider webs or something.

On the way home, I ran the pusher as stand-alone, engaging the clutch when the car reached 20MPH, then putting the EV transmission in neutral and allowing the diesel to provide all of the power. This worked well, with steady, but not astounding acceleration all the way up to 60MPH, which is where I chickened out. River Road is only two lane, and has cross-traffic. I'll save the high speed heroics for the interstate at a later date.

Getting on the freeway to go home, I decided to try some full throttle acceleration, using both the diesel and electric drives running flat-out. It wasn't really enough to require wheelie bars, but I was able to merge with the 55+MPH traffic smoothly on an uphill onramp.

Still no anomalous handling problems to report. The car behaves just as it should, as if the pusher wasn't even there. I was able to hear the engine, but it's not loud, what with the road noise inside the car. When I get the control and trailer lights cables fed into the car with connectors instead of running through the unlatched hatch-back door, it will be quieter still. I also have my eye on a heavily insulated hood from a diesel at the junkyard. More acoustic deadening.

Mar 29th. A teeny update on not much being done. I've working way too much on way too little sleep for the last few weeks, and now I'm feeling strung out and fatigued. In what few spare minutes I could work into the pusher, I installed a couple of new circuits into the controller. One circuit monitors that glow plug power and flashes the indicator light while the power is still flowing after the timing cycle has ended. I've been having bad results using the glow plug light to time the wait before starting the engine. The lamp goes off before the power to the plugs stops, so the new circuit will allow me to wait 5 -10 seconds more until starting the engine, while being assured that the plugs are still heating. Hopefully, this will get me more reliable starts.

The other circuit is an automatic reset for the AC inverter that runs the clutch motor. I found out that the inverter goes into overload when the battery voltage sags under starting load. I've gotten caught a couple of times with no way to engage the clutch because the inverter is in error mode, so now it gets reset when the oil pressure light extinguishes after the engine starts. Should solve the problem for good.

I've been thinking about my desire to use an automatic transmission on the pusher, and considering my experiences with the manual transmission so far. The clutch actuator built into the pusher seems to work very well, and I've yet to experience any problems associated with the manual transmission, such as bucking, unexpected deceleration, additional unwanted load on the EV before the diesel begins to supply power, etc. All in all, I think I can live with the pusher's manual transmission. The main reason for wanting an automatic was to make the conversion easier to do, but now that all of the mechanical and electronic interfaces are built, I'm inclined to try it out for a while and see if I even need the AT. I'll have more power and better fuel economy with a stick, and if the hill-climbing ability is within reason, I don't see any reason to have to downshift while under way, so the manual may just stay.

I do know where there is an '83 rabbit 4-door with an AT. I'll call about that tomorrow, if it can be had cheaply, I'll probably get it. It's time to get the body panels I need to make this project a bit more ship-shape, and if I buy a whole car, this saves me the bother of scouring wrecking yards for a hood, tail lights, etc. Also coming up is a new battery that will fit inside the engine compartment, some less ratty tires, fitting the original fuel tank into the body, and finally, the Rabbit rear end in place of the curved sheet metal. Oh, and I have just gotta get caught up on some sleep.....

 

March 30th. The big news of the day is that the pusher has a new blue hood. Yeah, big whoop, but this is the first step towards getting the body work completed, and making the trailer weather resistant, so I don't have to hide it under plastic and tarps. This hood doesn't have big holes from the vandalism, and it has a thick sound-absorbent mat attached to the underside. While I was at the wrecking yard, I also picked up a manual (as opposed to cable-operated) hood latch, a rear hatch unit (the original is bent and damaged beyond repair), replacement tail and side marker lamps, and pocketfuls of small, free parts for both the pusher and the EV. Also checked out used tires, of which there were many that still have good tread, and even found an automatic transmission for $100, although I don't know if I even want it now.

Of course, the pusher attracted a lot of attention in the wrecking yard parking lot, and I ended up giving tours to interested customers for about half an hour before I could get away and get back to wrenching used parts.

Before setting out in the morning, I used some self-stick knobby gripper material to attach the controller head to the dash, just within reach of my right hand while it rests on the steering wheel. This makes controlling the throttle and clutch much easier than when the controller was sitting on the passenger seat, and any passengers I carry will probably appreciate it too!

Today, I tried bump starting the engine by letting out the clutch while the car was in motion, rather than using the starter. This is the first time I've felt any roughness from the trailer. It kind of caused the EV to decelerate, then more or less jumped forward a bit when the engine started. Nothing too dramatic, but compared with the mild disposition I've experienced during the other trials, it was 'different'. I also found out what happens when you accidentally engage the clutch on the pusher while standing still. As expected, the engine dies, nothing more.

 

 

The Latest, as of April 3rd. Work, Rain, Income Taxes. Also used some time between storms yesterday to install a new trailer light connector on the EV, along with a 24 conductor AMP connector for the controller circuitry. These installed very neatly behind the flip-up license plate on the back of the car, along with the existing 30 amp AC connector for grid charging.

Today, I welded up a new battery bracket so I can install a battery in the engine compartment.

New facts and figures. Been doing some research on propane fumigation for diesel engines. This consists of introducing gaseous LPG into the intake manifold of a normally aspirated diesel engine in order to increase power output, increase mileage, and decrease emissions and particulates (smoke). Wondering if it could work on the pusher. Of course, trying to wring 20% more horsepower out of that worn engine might be asking for trouble...

Mar. 5th. Short update, no photos. Several days of fooling around with the new battery box and installing the rest of the permanent wiring to the engine compartment. Moved the "cold start knob" to a more functional location at the front of the engine compartment, and installed the battery isolator that will allow the alternator on the engine to charge both the pusher engine battery and the auxiliary battery in the EV. Sent off a mail to Yuri, who has some experience with propane conversions on gas engines. Here's a clip from the mail detailing my plan for the fumigation system, when I get around to installing it:

<snip>

I think that a complete propane carburetion system is way overkill for my purposes, and they are impossible to find used around here, I've been looking for years and years. There are several problems using a conventional LPG setup on a diesel. First of all, normally-aspirated diesels have essentially no vacuum present at the intake manifold, due to the absence of a throttle body and butterfly valve. This is one of the reasons they are so efficient, there is no loss from the pistons pulling against a restricted air intake.

Some of the fumigation devices I've looked into either have a venturi that has to be inserted into the intake airflow to produce a measurable vacuum, or they are for turbo diesels, and use intake boost pressure as an indicator to modulate the LPG. I'm looking for something much simpler. Here's my plan so far:

1) LPG pressure cylinder (vapor output valve), approx 2 gallons (US).
2) Pressure regulator (11"W.C.).
3) Solenoid valve, controlled by the ignition and interlocked by the oil pressure switch. "On-Off" switch on the dash of the EV.
4) Salvaged gas BBQ valve, mechanically linked to the throttle actuator. When the throttle is at idle, gas valve is closed. 50% throttle (cruising speed) = valve wide open.
5) A "T" or "Y", with two rubber hoses leading to the air cleaner housing.
6) Two orifices of 6,000 BTU each, injecting the gas into the air cleaner housing (cast aluminum, lots of mixing volume) right between the ports (long, curved "ram air" tubes) leading to the four cylinders of the engine.

I'm figuring 12,000 BTU based on a 10% mix with the diesel. These engines get 50 MPG at 60 MPH, so I'm "guesstimating" about a gallon of diesel per hour, based on 128,000 BTU/gal of diesel. If I have good success with the 10%, I might try upping the rate by drilling the orifices, but I won't want to go all out, this engine has significant wear already. Some of the mailing list messages I found mentioned that trying to pump too much of it into an engine results in nasty problems, mostly cracked pistons, where the rings break the shoulders between the rings.

Anyhow, that's the plan. I have a lot of other more important stuff to do on the pusher first, but I hope to be able to try out some dual fuel by the end of the month.

</snip>

[edit, Dec. 14, 2002] There's now a page dedicated to LPG fumigation on this site. For more information, go to the LPG Fumigation page [/edit]

Been trying to get to this update for days. April 10th. Saturday, I spent pretty much all morning in the wrecking yard, picking through cars for parts and locating a suitable set of used tires. After looking at what seemed like every tire on every car on the lot, I found three 175/70R13 radials on a scrapped out Dodge Colt. These were in as-new condition, and although they are an off-brand, I purchased them and had them mounted and balanced. If I'd been satisfied with the stock Rabbit tire size (155/70R13), I would have had a lot of choices, but since the spare for the trailer will also serve as the spare for the EV, I wanted exact replacement size tires.

On the way back from the tire store where I had the mounting done, I had the opportunity to drive the pusher on wet pavement, and then set a new land-speed record for my EV, of 65 MPH. I'll have to remember to put the GPS in the car before I go out again. It seemed like I was really flyin' low for 65, and the guy in the black Mustang who thought he was going to pass me gave up and dropped in behind me.

Other tiny niggling projects that I completed in the last few days are replacing the transmission gear oil with synthetic lubricant, retorqueing the cylinder head, installing the AMP connectors so that attaching the control cable for the pusher is faster and more secure, replacing some shields that direct air through the radiator, and finally, trying to figure out why I lose a quart of coolant every time I take the diesel out on a run. The antifreeze just seems to gush out of the expansion tank cap, even though I tried a different cap. Next step in this process will be to install a pressure gauge on the cooling system and get some idea how much pressure is building up in there. I have this bad feeling about leaking head gaskets, and compression byproducts ending up squeezing past the seals, but the coolant is clean, albeit a bit foamy.

 

Monday, I dug into the 55 gallon barrel of high sulfur diesel that I have had stored out in the shed since filling up the Crown's fuel tank. I pumped about 4 gallons into a container, and refilled the plastic fuel container on the pusher. I've burned something like six gallons while fooling around trying to get it started, running it in the driveway, and now, powering the EV down the highway. The next aspect of this project will be to get the real fuel tank out of the remainder of the car and get it mounted in the pusher.
     Here's a photo of the battery bracket and isolator (the blue heat sink in the rear). Oh Damn! You mean to tell me that the terminals and caps are supposed to be on top of the battery???? Relax, it's a gel-cell (sealed battery), no leaks, no maintenance, and it will only fit under the hood if it's mounted on it's side.

 

Half Rabbit goes wheelie!

 

Apr. 11th. After an afternoon of groveling on the dirt, I'm one fuel tank closer to disposing of the rest of the car. The tank (in the foreground, in front of the yellow-and-red fuel container), had no less than six hoses connected to it and I had to unbolt the rear axle to get it completely free of the body. It's kind of oddly shaped, with contours in the top the shape of a seat bottom, as that's exactly what was pressed against it from the inside of the car, the rear seat.

Also today, I installed a 0-30 psi pressure gauge on the expansion tank of the cooling system to see if I could figure out what's going on there. The gauge goes right up to 20 psi, where the pressure cap starts venting, after only a minute of engine operation, hot or cold. Not sure if this is normal, an indication of leakage from the cylinders, evidence of cavitation, or what. Maybe it's time to fire off an e-mail to the VW Diesel Tech Help guys and get an expert opinion. I do know that after shutting down the engine, it will hold 15 psi of pressure for hours afterwards, so how much of a leak inside the engine could there be? Also there is no contamination of the coolant, no soot, oily residue, etc., so I'm leaning towards cavitation, the formation of gas bubbles due to engine vibration and mineral deposits.

 

Well, the VW Tech Help guys thought that I had either a bad head gasket, or a cracked head, so this is a problem in search of a Band-Aid. April 14th. This image of underhood spaghetti is my temporary, half-assed solution to the air-in-the-coolant problem. Air and coolant mixed comes out of the top of the radiator at bottom right, goes into a ¾" Tee, where the flow slows down due to the enlarged passageway, and the bubbles rise to the top, to be vented out via the vent valve (blue top). Coolant, sans air, is returned to the cooling system expansion tank, while the air (still mixed with a small amount of coolant) goes into the bottle. Actually, the bottle has since been replaced by the windshield washer reservoir, which is handy, because I can use the built-in electric pump to return the accumulated coolant to the expansion tank. Top center is the 0-30 psi gauge, that I'm leaving in to check on the system pressure.

On a 27 mile test run today, I lost no coolant on the road, it all went into the reservoir. The system pressure was occasionally higher than I like to see (25 lbs), but the engine isn't overheating, and I am recovering all of the antifreeze, so it looks like this patch-job is a success.

Monday, I'll find out if I can get possession of a 1.6 liter diesel short block that I found outside the automotive technology shop at a local institute of higher learning. The engine was covered with dirt and grass clippings, and looks to be abandoned. If I can get it, I'll probably rebuild it instead of the engine I have now, because if the head on this engine is bad, I just want to start from scratch and do a complete and proper rebuild.

 

Welcome to Sharkey's Chop Shop. Easter Sunday. This is what remains of the rear of the car this afternoon. Morning, I cleaned up the exterior of the fuel tank and test fitted it into the trailer. This got me to thinking about what parts and pieces I'd be able to use to make the sheet metal fabrication easier and more workman-like. It was difficult to imagine some of the relationships between the various parts without being able to measure them and hold them up together, so I decided to begin removing the parts I thought I'd need and getting rid of those I didn't. After spending some time figuring out the various bits of tubing going to the fuel filler and tank, the Sawzall was brought to life and the sectioning began in earnest. It's kind of scary how flimsy modern automobiles are. Do I really want to get up on the freeway in one of these and do 65 MPH??!!!

Very early in this project, I knew that the pusher would need a little styling enhancement. What I had in mind was a small spoiler or maybe a couple of vertical tail fins. This is the ultimate!!! A full Daytona-style airfoil wing!! Actually, I just haven't quite decided where to make the cut to remove the top of the hatch. It will be reconfigured to serve as a deck lid, and I need to make sure that I don't remove too much material when I top it. Otherwise, the rear is still way too long. About 24" will be cut off from what you see here to compact the back end. I should still have some room in the "trunk" for a couple of tool boxes or maybe a small cooler of refreshing beverages.

 

 

April 23rd, finally getting an update posted. Last week I was bitten by the Spring Cleaning bug, and got busy hauling a lot of useless junk out of the yard. A trip to the dump to haul away the winter's household garbage (two trash cans full, I recycle nearly everything else), and all of the broken glass, ratty wet carpet, and shattered plastic parts of the pusher body. While at the dump, I recycled all of the surplus steel, body panels, rear axle, and other sundry ferrous metals from the pusher. A trip to the wood products recycle yard eliminated about a ton of rotted dimensional lumber and all of the bark and duff from last winter's firewood. The local battery distributor paid me $13.50 for 1,200 pounds of dead lead acid batteries that had been stacking up for almost a year.

Friday, I got busy and began a project that has been needed for six years or so, building a rear wall into the work shed, using corrugated aluminum that I had in a stack just for that purpose. Now I can use the space along the back wall for my work bench, metal closet filled with extension cords, etc, air compressor and other stuff without having to cover it all with plastic to keep the rain off. The wall also gives me a new level of privacy from my sociopathic, nosey-old-bat of a neighbor, and helps keep much of my tool noise from invading the rest of the neighborhood, not that I really care about that too much. Sometimes it must sound like a boiler factory up here on the hill. Still to come is a 5' extension off of he left hand side of the shed to house the air compressor, trash cans and the big drum of diesel fuel, freeing up still more space for projects. As you see above, the Pusher is now securely under a roof, and needs no plastic or tarps for protection from the weather. I also now have at least a little bit of area in which to work that is sheltered from rain and direct wind and sun.

 

        

 

Saturday, I constructed a new air/coolant separator device. The old unit is on the left, and has been replaced by the new, more efficient design on the right. Longer tubing allows the air bubbles to float to the top of the flow of coolant, and the vertical runs of tubing at the "T" junctions allow the air to rise up, filling the top tubing, and then being expelled through the vent valve at the top. This device is mounted in front of the radiator, which was about the only long, unobstructed area I could find in the engine compartment. The bonus is that it's location in the airflow through the grille helps to cool the antifreeze mixture and might even have a beneficial effect on the separation process.

Greg came over today for a test run with the Pusher. We did a round trip out to Fern Ridge Reservoir, stopping on the way to weigh the car and Pusher at the County scales on Clear Lake Road. The EV still weighs 3,100 pounds, and now I know that the pusher tips the scale at 1,100. Multiple stops to check the engine and coolant pressure revealed that the system is running about 8 pounds of pressure. The coolant recovery tank was about half-filled on the way out (about 16 miles), but gained almost no additional fluid on the return trip (???). I'm still on the learning curve about this cooling system. Maybe it's getting time to take a 50 mile trip up to Lebanon to work for some clients, and see what happens on an extended trip.

Before that, though, I'll be installing the 18 new Trojan T-105 batteries in the EV. I can't see any reason to be hauling around a half-ton of batteries that only put out a couple of hundred pounds worth of power. New cells should make the EV much more long-lived and give me better acceleration. Besides, if I'm going to get very far from home, I want the ability to run the car to the end of it's range in case the Pusher konks out in the middle of rural timbuktu.

Not pictured here is my huge swollen left foot, which I managed to nearly impale on the end of a crowbar while attempting to unseat the bead on one of the old VW rims while removing the tire for disposal. It'll be interesting to see if I can walk in the morning....

 

 

EV Pusher Project

Archive Page Four

 

Time to archive the last page and start a new one. Apr 24, 2001. Consumed most of the day patching holes in the pusher firewall, steering linkage hole, heater hose hole, brake line holes, holes that I made while extracting spot welded brackets with the pneumatic hammer, etc. The biggest hole was the air intake for the heater, about 8" x 8", covered with an aluminum plate and riveted in place. All of this to get ready for installing the original Rabbit fuel tank in the rear of the trailer.

Before quitting for the day, I managed to scratch together the parts needed to prototype an LPG fumigation system using a BBQ regulator, 12 volt solenoid valve, and a 11,000 BTU orifice from the same BBQ. The blue line carries the low pressure propane to the air intake on the engine, simply dumping it into the intake horn on the air cleaner. This will suffice for a test. Passing the gas through the air filter element would be a good way to eventually clog it up, so the final product will inject directly into the intake manifold. The finished LPG system will need to be interlocked to the engine and ignition, and will have a metering valve connected to the throttle. This setup is strictly for test, I'll try it at speed and maybe climb a few hills and see if it really does improve performance.

Also got a start on affixing the controller cabinet to the body of the trailer, attempting to tidy things up a bit in preparation for mounting the permanent fuel tank.

[edit] Don't forget to view the LPG Fumigation page [/edit]

April 25th. Trial by Fumigation (sort of). Had to work in the morning, then did three loads of wash and hung it out. Didn't really get started on the trailer until 3PM or so. Mounted the controller box and glow plug relay off the floor on the left-hand kick panel, and reinstalled the inverter wiring that I had removed to plug holes in the firewall. No surprise, the cables were too short for the holes they now needed to go through, so I had to make new, longer ones. Piddled around with a spring on the throttle lever, and decided that it could wait until later. Modified the controller to have a slave relay for the fumigation solenoid, and installed a temporary switch on the controller head in the EV so I could turn the LPG on and off.

So, about 7:15PM, I headed off to the grocery with the pusher in tow. The nearest Food Flood market is about 2.5 miles up Delta Highway, so I thought this would be a good time to try out the propane system. After attaining 50 MPH, I gritted my teeth and flipped the switch, which didn't have much of a discernable effect. In fact, it had no effect whatsoever. No gain in power, no huge flames out of the exhaust, no booster rocket acceleration, nothing. At the market, I checked to see that the gas was reaching the air intake (it was), and put the trailer into 3rd gear for the surface street trip home. Tried turning the gas on and of at 35MPH, with no results.

At home, with the engine idling, I switched on the gas and noticed that the engine speed increased by 60-80 RPM. Hmmm, about 10%, roughly the same as the gas-to-diesel mixture. The one effect that was quite noticeable was the change in the odor of the exhaust while idling on LPG/diesel. Gone was the ugly, oily smell, with hints of sulfur and old crankcase drippings. While I wouldn't call the odor pleasant, it was considerably better, somewhat reminiscent of propane fueled vehicles, but with a diesel twist (but then, I'm pretty used to the smell of diesel at this point).

Perhaps the magic effects of propane fumigation aren't fully released until the oft-touted 20% mixture is attained. Let's see, that would be about 25,600 BTU...That would mean drilling out the orifice in the system to 1.5mm, or a #53 twist drill size. Maybe I'll double up on the 11,000 BTU jets, or use one 11,000 and the 15,000 that I have. Oh no, more experiments to come.

Apr 26th. After drilling out the orifice on the LPG system, I washed both the EV and Pusher, then left home to pick up some building materials for the shed, purchase some feed for the animals, and on a whim, stopped by the wrecking yard to inquire about purchasing a complete 1.6 liter diesel for rebuilding. While wandering about, trying to remember where all of the Rabbits in the yard were, I passed through a row of pickup trucks. There, hidden in the middle of all of these Detroit locomotives, was a 1988 Rabbit Cabrolet (convertible), with a complete and very straight rear clip. I guess that being hidden in the truck section, no one looking for VW parts had found and stripped it yet. Checking into the office, I found that the engines were "core" (considered not running) and were $250. The rear clip was $75, if I prepared the body for cutting, clearing away any trim, cables, wiring and, most importantly, any fuel lines. As I've just finished cutting the rear off of one of these cars, I know how simple it is. I'm very tempted to buy it because I'll save hours of body work trying to straighten the one I have, and the Cab rear has a vertical door instead of a diagonal hatch, and I think it will be much easier to integrate it into the pusher body.

As for the 25,000 BTU propane system, I still can't tell any difference. One would think that more power would equal more speed at a given throttle position, or less throttle to hold the same speed, but over the course of the short distance I tried it, there wasn't any change from gas-on to gas-off. Maybe once I get it out on the open road with straight, level pavement and lots of room to move? Also considering tha the fuel I'm using is over five years old, and although diesel keeps well, the Cetane rating (like Octane for gasoline) suffers with time. Either trying some fresh fuel, or purchasing a Cetane booster might be a good thing to try.

 

 

Just enough time for a speed-of-light update while trying to cook and eat dinner, put away the horse, chop firewood and shower. May 2. After two days of pestering the wrecking yard to get the rear of the Cabrolet cut off, they finally went out and got the right tool and did it. Monday, I spent the entire (very rainy) morning doing the preparation to this car, getting it ready to be cut. I also noticed a lot of small parts that had been removed, like the weather stripping around the door, the gas spring from the door, etc. I made busy and collected those needed parts from the other Cab on the lot and made sure that I got a complete rear clip. Of course, to top off the morning, I locked my keys in the EV and had to beg a ride home from Greg to get my spare.

So now, with the rear clip on site, I can start making some progress on the body. I also found out today that the clutch in the pusher slips when I really lay on the throttle. I don't remember this happening before, so I'm wondering if it's the effect of the LPG fumigation and increased horsepower.

The other project I'm lining myself up for is to convert the EV to have rear disk brakes. I found a 1986 Golf GTI with everything I need to get 4WDB for $30 plus any machining, parts, etc.

More later, including a photo of the famous vertical rear door...

 

Yep, here's the famous door. Spent some time yesterday and today (May 4th) cutting off the bits of the rear clip that I knew I wouldn't be using, things like the inner fender wells. Also made some best-guess cuts on the front of the clip to make it fit in closer with the rest of the trailer so that I can begin fitting the two together. Sawed about 5 inches off the end of the pusher, and had to remove the muffler and tail pipe until I get the rear clip fitted better and can carve out a mouse hole in the rear roll pan for it to exit through.

Before burning out from lack of sustenance, I fitted a trailer lighting connector to the pigtail leading to the tail lamp assemblies on the rear clip. Since I sawed the supports off for the former temporary lighting, I decided to make these lights functional, but detachable until I get the clip fastened in place.

A week+ of updates all at once... May 12th. Some progress, and a bunch of related and unrelated chores over the last week. Last weekend, I installed 18 new Trojan T-105 6 volt batteries in the EV, cleaning out the battery compartment of dust and dirt, and making sure that all of the terminal connections (all 36 of 'em) were properly made and secure. The car seems to have a bit better acceleration now, and I think I'm using less ampere hours per mile, but I've only put 12 miles on it since the switch.

Also intruding on my time was several trips to radio stations to install equipment, and resurrect dead transmitters. Spring means outdoor chores like grass cutting, so I installed some of the batteries from the EV into my electric tractor and got the mower attachment after the vegetation that my horse won't eat down to stubble.

So, on to the pusher. I've been continuing to trim and fit the rear clip onto the back of the trailer. In this photo, the alignment is getting very close, the height is proper, the length about where it will be in the end, and I'm formulating plans for sheet metal that I'll have made and will weld in to support the back, and seal it up so that the weather stays out. Today, I cut the first few inches of metal off of the front of the doors to use as a transition from the front fenders to the rear, and then cut the back four inches of the doors off to use as an armature to provide the needed support and contours for the new construction. The old body off of the pusher is getting to be just a pile of splinters laying around waiting to be recycled, you can see some of it on the right of the image. Note that the remnants of the "A" pillars have been cut flush with the top of the body. I always worried that I would smack into those sharp posts, but didn't want to lop them off because I wasn't sure if I needed them to join with the rear. Well, I sure don't need them now! (I hope).

May 17. As nice as it would be to say I'm making progress putting the trailer together, this photo shows that I'm more busy tearing it apart. It turned out that the vandalism damage to the right fender was severe enough that I couldn't use it to align the rear clip, so I had to replace it before going any farther. Actually, I found two perfectly straight fenders (left and right) for $40, so I bought them both. Now I don't have to do any body work to either of them. Removing the fenders at the wrecking yard was an adventure. In addition to being held on with nine screws, the diabolical German engineers decided to also glue the fenders onto the car!!! A thick layer of really stiff rubber adhesive was applied between the rear of the fender and the firewall support post, and all over the heads of the screws, making the task to getting the body parts off without damage almost impossible, but I did it (with a little bending of the inner fender well where it doesn't show).

Back at home, I found that the pusher's left fender had no glue goop at all, and the right had so much that I couldn't even find the screw heads, and had to poke around with an ice pick just to locate them so I could cut away the caulking to remove them. Such consistency! While the fenders were off, I used a high pressure washer to blast all of the dirt out of the wheel wells, so now they're really nice and clean.

Thinking I'll wait to caulk the fenders back into place until after I've gotten the trailer prepped for painting. It'd be nice to be able to get them off again for sanding and priming.

Let's see, there are major parts from at least seven cars in the construction of the pusher at this point. When I locate a short block to rebuild, the tally will go even higher.

 

 

Time for the (now) once-a-week pusher report. Last Saturday (May 19th), after welding up a temporary support and installing some retaining screws to hold the rear clip in place, I took the longest trip with the trailer yet, 42 miles round trip to the site of the Oregon Country Fair, where I needed to do some planning for the renewable energy trailer's placement inside Main Camp. No problems to report, although I noticed today that one of the retaining bolts on the AC generator lost the nylon locking nut holding it tight. These diesels are hard on fasteners. I guess next I'll have to try double-nutting the generator and see if it can rattle loose again.

The engine ran nice and cool, but I lost a lot of coolant to the recovery tank after only 20 miles, nearly enough to overflow the tank. Since the goal is to drive it 250 miles to Eastern Oregon, I'd have to stop about 12 times to transfer the coolant back into the cooling system at this rate. Until a rebuilt head/engine is installed, I'm going to try to limit the loss of coolant by the addition of a needle valve on the recovery line. The idea is to slow down the flow of air escaping the system so that less liquid follows the air out the vent valve. This will be another try-it-and-see/adjust-it-some-more jobbies.

This will be the last photo of the pusher with it's ass in the air, when I got home from this trip, I removed the tow tongue and redrilled the mounting holes, so now the whole rig is sitting level with the EV.

Wish me luck, or burn a candle, or whatever, because Sunday, I'll be attempting another distance record, 100 miles round trip to a client's radio station. It's a straight run up the Interstate, no hills, and unless I have to stop to fool with the coolant system, no starting and stopping. Watch this space for exciting details (or not, if I get completely stranded on the way up or back).

Well, I made it! 46.5 miles each way (I know, big deal!!!). Sunday, May 27. Stopped twice along the way to check the coolant level and pressure, once at 26 miles, and again at 36. Looks like I have the needle valve set pretty close, the coolant recovery reservoir was only about three-quarters full when I arrived at the job site. The EV used 12.5 ampere-hours on the way up, running in parallel mode with the diesel. This is about what I'd expect to use in four miles of city street driving.

On the way back, I began to notice a slight lack of power about 12 miles from home. "Good" I thought, "This means that the propane cylinder is empty, so it really is making a difference." About 7 miles away from home, I began to notice a pronounced lack of power and power surges from the diesel. Figuring that the pick up hose in the fuel container had reached the end of the fuel level, I disengaged the clutch to motor home under electric power. The diesel promptly died, leaving me to struggle along at 50 MPH, pulling 200+ amps from the battery pack. One thing is for sure, I'm not planning on towing this trailer very far under EV power!

At home I did find that there was about a gallon left in the fuel can, but the hose had curled up out of the liquid and was pulling air. I filled the container full this time, as I don't want a repeat of this tomorrow when I return to finish the job. Since I'm still using the stupid plastic fuel can, I can't really say how much diesel I burned on the course of the 90+ miles I drove the pusher today, but I'm guesstimating something like 35 MPG, not great, but then the trailer is hardly aerodynamic at this point.

May 28th. Thank Goodness for dual-fueled hybrid vehicles! The trip up the Valley was uneventful, except for the semi trucks that were checking me out. I think one of the drivers (who honked and waved as he passed me) must have radioed ahead, because I was nearly always driving with an 18-wheeler right beside me as they looked over the pusher.

When I started the EV to begin the trip home, I found that the controller had failed, leaving me with no accelerator for the electric motor. It would idle just fine (at 1,800 RPM, as usual), but I couldn't speed it up past that. After deliberating a bit, I decided to just head home and hope that the pusher would keep running the whole way. Since the EV will reach 40 MPH under idle by upshifting through the gears, I was able to reach enough velocity to engage the pusher's clutch and apply power. Acceleration was a bit sluggish, as I had to disengage the EV's motor at 40 MPH, but I was able to hold 65 MPH the entire way home with the EV in neutral and the electric motor shut off.

The controller failed in this same manner last year at about this same time, so I'm hoping it's the same problem, a small $2 relay on the printed circuit board. If it's more complicated than that, I may not get it fixed right away, as I have no documentation on the controller, and have to reverse engineer the circuits before I can try to find defective components.

At any rate, I made it home in good time, and now need to decide if I should drive the EV/pusher to the job tomorrow (without an accelerator), or use my pickup. If the diesel dies without being able to accelerate the EV, it would be a very long and slow crawl home on farm roads. Maybe I'll have enough time in the morning to examine the controller and perhaps jumper out the relay as a test.

May 30, 2001. Over the course of the last four days, I've put 378 miles on the pusher driving back and forth to the client's radio station. This has been a good shake-down cruise, and I mean that literally. The biggest problem I've had is keeping the various nuts and bolts holding the accessories to the engine from abandoning ship due to vibration. Yet more problems with the AC generator mountings, the engine alternator lost a bolt, then sheared off the replacement. The neat chrome tip on the exhaust pipe lost it's screw, but the tip stayed on, rattling mightily and making me think I had thrown a rod or something else mechanically drastic. Of course, I didn't replace it immediately, so now the back of the trailer is covered with diesel soot (yuck). Guess I'll have to double-nut everything to keep the fixtures in place.

The 5 gallon fuel container is no picnic either, I've had to fill it each morning before leaving, removing the hoses and lifting it out of the back, and then replacing it while trying to not spill diesel all over the trailer and myself. Time to get the real tank installed. It would also be nice to have a larger propane cylinder, the little camping fuel containers had to be replaced at each end of the trip up and back, as one container (16.4 oz) wasn't enough for a round trip.

The controller problem turned out to be a shorted field control transistor. I popped in a generic replacement that I had on the shelf, and it seems to work fine, although I ordered a military-spec exact replacement part for the permanent repair.

Now it looks like the engine alternator isn't charging the battery, so I have another repair project (and money sponge).

 

 

Just a quick blip. Monday, June 4th. Yesterday, after the flea market, I went to look at a 1978 Rabbit Diesel that I found for sale in the classifieds that I thought I could use for a replacement engine for the pusher. Although the price was right ($325), the car was a total pile, poorly maintained, mostly wrecked, and had a soaking wet drivers seat because it had been sitting in the rain with the window open. It did start right up and idle fine, and even seemed to have a bit of power on hills, but the expansion tank was completely empty, as the owner had never checked the coolant level in the four months that he had owned and driven the car. Pouring in some water revealed some murky, diluted antifreeze, with an appearance similar to the polluted coolant in the pusher. All of this plus the obvious need of a new clutch made this car no bargain. I decided that at minimum, it needed a head gasket, and most likely, had a warped cylinder head like the pusher's engine. If I'm going to rebuild another engine for the trailer, I'd rather it was a later model 1.6 liter, and I'd rather start with one that wasn't damaged beyond routine repair.

In other cooling system news, today I installed the Rabbit's original heater core behind the grille and connected it to the engine, giving me another 14% radiator surface area. The original diesel radiator had been smashed in the vandalism, and the replacement I installed was from a gas engined Rabbit and was smaller in size. During my long distance trips last week, I noticed that the engine temperature went up after a period of acceleration, and took quite a while to cool off again. Hopefully, this will help with that, as I don't know how the pusher is going to handle mountain passes in the summer heat.

Don't know how much more I can cram into the engine compartment. Space is getting tighter all of the time under the hood. Maybe I should have started with a bigger car, like maybe a Cadillac?

June 21, Summer Solstice. An update, even though I don't deserve one.

No progress to report on the trailer. I'm just returned from a ten-day vacation to the Monterey Bay area, including a five-day, four-night stay ay Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, which is located 40 miles inside the Los Padres National Forest, outside of Carmel, California. The center is operated as a hot springs resort in the summer months, and I can't say as how I accomplished much of anything productive except for a lot of relaxing soaking in the hot mineral waters.

While visiting in Santa Cruz, I attended the Soquel Drive-In flea market, where I found four as-new Goodyear Invicta GLR low rolling resistance tires that will fit the EV for the price of $75.00 for all. Last year I paid $69.00 each for the tires that are on the car now. Cramming the tires into the sedan (which was already packed with luggage for two travelers), was a bit of a chore, but I got it all to fit.

The other notable find was a 2 gallon LPG cylinder that I've installed for the fumigation system.

Thinking I need to get some body work started on the pusher, and I'm also casting about for a replacement engine. Hope to get something useful done before the summer slips away...

 

 

EV Pusher Project

Archive Page Five

 

 

The results of today's efforts is an aluminum top cover for the rear compartment. Although I intend for this to eventually be covered by a vinyl tonneau cover, I'll want something that a knife can't slit open for security reasons. For now, this fitted sheet of previously-Crown-bus-roofing will eliminate the aerodynamic drag that the large open area caused.

Also visible is the fuel filler cap, which I began installing in preparation for mounting the original fuel tank in the trunk. Yeah, I know, I said I was going to do this a couple of months ago, but I'm getting to it now, OK? I have almost exactly one month to try and get ready for the SolWest renewable energy fair in John Day, OR, a round trip of 500+ miles over the Cascade and Ochoco mountain ranges. At this point, I don't have a chase car arranged, and I'm still not too sure about the cooling system on this pusher. Great idea, taking it over two passes and into the desert in July all alone, no???

Not evident in the photo is the square metal tubing spreader the I welded in to hold the rear clip at the proper width, or the 1.6 liter diesel core engine and automatic transmission that I ordered and paid for at the wrecking yard yesterday. The engine and transmission won't be ready for the John Day trip, as the engine will need to be properly rebuilt and installed with the AT. That ought to take me about another year...

Yesterday, one of the local wrecking yards had an "all-you-can-carry-for-$35" sale. They did have a few Rabbits, even some diesels, but the cars were so packed together that it was almost impossible to get the doors open. Added to this was the hazard of cars stacked three and four high. Sometimes I had to climb up a tower of teetering vehicles, only to find that the parts I wanted were on the car, but not accessible. I did manage to get a flimsy plastic and light steel bumper (known as a "Euro Bumper") that is perfect for the rear of the pusher, but I didn't pay the full price for it and some small parts. The original "5 MPH" bumper weighed a lot, and stuck out too far. All I can say is that I'm grateful that the wrecking yard I usually frequent is laid out like a parking lot, with the cars well-spaced, not stacked, and the lot is fully graveled and not a mud hole.

Today, I ordered some custom sheet metal parts to help me join the front and rear clips, and purchased and fabricated some angle iron to support the fuel tank. Here's a story about getting the trailer licensed at the local State Department of Motor Vehicles.

Onward. I try to shake off the doldrums brought on by post-vacation depression, and set my sights on John Day or bust.

July 7, 2001. Here's a job I've been dreading since cutting the car in two, dealing with the transition between the old floor metal and the new rear clip. It's mostly done now, but involved laying on the ground scraping thick grease and dirt off of the bottom if the floor pan, grinding off the layer of paint, then welding custom 1" x 1" 18 gauge metal angle to stiffen the end and make a vertical edge for the metal which will enclose the space between the front and rear clips. None of that shows in this photo, and neither does all of the preparation for installing the fuel tank which was done last week. Before I can finish that, I need to remove the temporary supports for the rear clip, which requires this fabrication, so I must forge onward.

See those two 4 x 4's stacked up under the rear of the trailer? Those were my pillows for the better part of the afternoon while I used the gas welder to lay beads overhead. Of course, the top of the floor pan has an undercoating layer of something that burns like napalm, and it ignites with every weld done from the bottom. In all I'm going to be pretty glad to see this phase of the project finished as soon as possible, like tomorrow!

 

 

July 12th. Nothing unusual about continuous interruptions, I had a bunch since last week, and tomorrow is the first day of the Oregon Country Fair, which I am supposed to be working. This morning, I went over to the wrecking yard and picked up my new (used) engine and automatic transmission. both of which you see here after unloading at home. Although it doesn't show, this engine has a ****chrome valve cover**** Oooooh.... Began tearing the cylinder head off so I can take it to a machine shop and have it checked out. The wrecking yard will exchange it for another if it turns out to be warped or defective, but I need to know that before the 30 day grace period expires.

July 21st. A week-plus with no updates, but a lot of work accomplished. The head on the core engine was defective, it had a huge crack that I didn't need a machine shop to find, so the wrecking yard gave me a replacement, which is at the machine shop being tested and rebuilt.

Over the course of the last week, I've finished the bulkhead at the rear of the trailer, built a proper mounting support for the muffler, welded up a reconfigured filler pipe and installed all of the hoses for the fuel tank, designed and consigned a spacer for the AC generator pulley on the front of the engine, welded up the AC generator adjustment arm, installed new wiring and a slave relay for the towing lights, built a proper bracket for the LPG fumigation cylinder, and a whole bunch of stuff I can't remember right now, but yes, I was busy!

Today, I received 10 gallons of Biodiesel fuel, compliments of Ian and Tomas of Eugene Biosource. These fellows had a booth at Energy Park at the Oregon Country Fair last weekend, and I approached them about buying some fuel for my trip to SolWest next Friday. The were most gracious and accommodating, and are allowing me to use the fuel in exchange for future consultation or fabrication, although I still think I should at least pay them what regular petro-diesel would have cost me for the trip.

Anyway, here I am "washing" a sample of the fuel using water and compressed air. This process removes any residual methanol and lye from the reaction process. It's really and extra-credit step in making the fuel, but I wanted to have some involvement in the process, and it seemed like a kind of backwards way to get hands-on experience, starting with the finished product, then working my way up to making it from used vegetable oil.

Speaking of hands-on, I did manage to slop a little of the fuel on my hands while putting in the hoses and air stones. It's great! No stink and no phobias about toxic solvents leeching into my skin!! Thomas and Ian arrived in a VW Vanagon diesel which was running on this same fuel, and it only emitted a slightly greasy smell similar to candle paraffin. This bus has a newly-rebuilt engine that has been and will only be fueled by Biodiesel.

The next week is sure to be hectic, as I prepare to make the trip to John Day. Watch for at least another few updates before I leave.

 

 

End of the Month update. July 31st. In this photo, after six days of frantic preparation, I'm as ready as I'll ever be to leave for my trip to Eastern Oregon. A bicycle rack has been added to the tongue of the trailer, and sheet metal cut from the old doors has been welded to the sides of the pusher to enclose the holes left by the old wheel arches. The details of the preparations are now lost, but suffice it to say that I spent the last few days before the trip working on the trailer 15 hours a day.

Now all that's left is to hit the road and burn up some pavement. Sharkey's Big Adventure is chronicled in SolWest 2001.

 

 

 

Saturday and Sunday at:

 

Saturday, August 28th, 2001, 6:00 AM. Yes, that's right I got to "sleep in" this morning. The night's rest was pretty good, considering that the last time I slept in a tent was probably when I was in Boy Scouts. As usual when away from home, I was wearing ear plugs while I slept, so it was the morning light which awakened me.

Ate some breakfast granola and made a cup of coffee on the portable stove, as I don't know when the espresso trailer opens this morning, and I need to turn on the lights inside my head. The thing about running on sleep deprivation and caffeine is that I have a lot of energy, but also a zoned-out feeling which will eventually catch up with me.

SolWest is hosted at the Grant County Fairgrounds, just a couple of blocks away from Main Street in John Day. The Orchard, which is where the tent camping is located, is to the north of the grounds, and is also the area under the KJDY-AM transmission tower. To the south are the stock barns and classrooms where many of the presentations and lectures are held, then the Pavillion building, which houses some of the displays and the fair office. Outside to the east is the general vendor's area, with displays of wind machines, solar panels, water pumping equipment, and my EV and pusher combo.

Arrived at the car to find that the circuit breaker on the service panel had tripped with 18 ampere-hours still to charge, so I reset the breaker to finish the charge. Darren arrived with a 10 by 10 foot pop-up canopy, which we set up over the rear of the car and front of the trailer. I scored a folding table from behind the Home Power booth and taped some printed sheets of descriptive material about the car and trailer to the top and put out a stack of my "business" cards with the web address on them. Open for Business!

 

(Neither of these guys is me!)

 

Borrowed a Seimens SP-70 photovoltaic panel from Bob at Energy Outfitters, and using some wire donated by another booth, I hooked it up to recharge the battery under the hood of the pusher.

I had expected that there would be some interest in my homemade hybrid, but the response was pretty astounding. From the time I arrived at the car about 7 AM until I finally broke away about 7 PM, there was a constant stream of visitors, both public and fellow exhibitors, coming by to ask about the trailer and car. I put the trailer first, as the EV seemed to inspire less interest than the pusher.

About halfway through the day, I realized that the non-stop talking was going to deep-six my throat, so I tried to conserve my voice, and talk from the diaphragm. This helped some, and I made it a point to drink a lot of the bottled water that I had purposely brought along to beat the high country heat.

Of course, the questions about the pusher were quite predictable, "What does it do?" and "What is that drill for?" and "Doesn't it get out of control with that single-point hitch?", and all of the rest. After a while, I decided to have some fun with it and would make some of the viewers draw their own conclusions, then follow up with the correct information. This also helped conserve my voice, as there would be perhaps ten or fifteen people drawing conclusions and figuring out the system, and passing the knowledge along to others who had just walked up.

Somewhere during the afternoon, I got away for a few minutes to have a baked potato and visit with other friends who had exhibits. The solar panel that I had borrowed had recharged the pusher battery, so I disconnected it and returned it to be stowed away with the other merchandise at the end of the day.

Dropped over to the Home Power booth to see what Richard Perez had in mind for dinner, but was disappointed to find that he and the HP crew were heading for a heavy-duty steak house, which didn't appeal to my vegetarian tastes at all. Instead, I ordered a garden burger at one of the food concessions on site, then took it over to Darren's motel room to nosh along with some good beer before doing the shower thing.

Afterwards, we had planned on going over to Canyon City to take part in the "Music in the Park" event, which is when the entire town turns out for a festival in the town square. Unfortunately, when I unhooked the trailer and started the EV to drive the two miles from John Day to Canyon City, I found that the controller had blown a transistor, and the motor would only idle, I had no accelerator action. This is the second time this has happened, but never so far from home and repair parts.

About the time that I arrived back at the Motel to tell Darren that we would need to take his car to Canyon City, we saw the HP crew returning from dinner. Stopped by their swank motel suite (they get the multi-bedroom apartment at the Dreamers Inn) to inquire about the possibility that they would know where I could pick up a replacement component to repair the car in the morning. They didn't, and we ended up staying for a chat, drinking a little bit more beer, smoking cigarettes, and swapping stories.

The little party broke up about 10:30 or so, and I went back to The Orchard and my tent to go to bed at an actually reasonable hour for a change.

Sunday, July 29th. The day dawned partly cloudy, with the smell of rain in the air. Did the usual morning routine, breakfast, coffee, etc., and wandered over to the car and trailer. Today I resolved to spend a bit more time checking out the other exhibitor's wares and take in Dave's Biodiesel lecture.

At 11:00 AM, the Electrathon race began in the fairgrounds parking lot. About 20 cars started the circuit, which ran out of the main gates and looped around one square block of the adjoining residential neighborhood. Last year, the track was fully contained within the parking lot, and the tightness of the turns was really hard on tires and wheels, producing many blowouts.

Also during the 2000 SolWest fair, the Home Power crew was bitten by the Electrathon racing bug, and vowed to have their own racing team and cars this year. The two high-tech cars that Richard Perez commissioned weren't quite race-ready, so one was displayed at the Home Power booth, but not entered in the competition.

Before the race ended, I had to leave to join the Biodiesel lecture. David had brought a small trailer which had been reconstructed into a complete Biodiesel lab, capable of producing 12 gallons of fuel per batch. The first half of the lecture was some background on vegetable oil fuels, and very basic concepts of diesel engine operation. I had a pretty good handle on these, having read up on the fuel and torn my engine to a bare block and back to running condition. What I didn't know is that Rudolph Diesel got the idea for the diesel engine combustion by watching African natives kindle fires by igniting combustible materials by heating them inside telescoping wooden logs, the compression of the air causing the temperature to rise to a very high degree.

The second half of Dave's talk was a demonstration of the actual making of Biodiesel fuel as a "blender batch", literally made in a kitchen blender using virgin oil, isopropyl alcohol and store-bought drain opener. Although the reaction and settling of the fuel takes about eight hours, after only five minutes there was a noticeable separation of fuel from the rest of the mixture in the blender top.

There had been an intense interest in Biodiesel fuel all during the fair, and Saturday, I had been offered a fill up with fuel by two people, Jacques, who had come from Corvallis, Oregon in a Biodiesel-fueled VW Rabbit with a 15 gallon barrel of fuel in his back seat, and Nick, who was hauling a 55 gallon drum of commercially-made Biodiesel in the back of his diesel pickup. Now I had to decide who to accept a refill from. Nick was leaving, and had driven his truck onto the fairgrounds to get close enough to reach the filler on the pusher, scattering fair attendees in the process. I apologized to Jacques, as I didn't want him to be disappointed that I didn't take him up on his offer of fuel. As it turned out, Jacques was later to play a much more important role in this trip.

 

(Left-to-right) Unknown fair attendee. Jacques, manning the filler hose. Mike and
Shorty, who travel in a Biodiesel-powered school bus conversion. Nick, pumping
the fuel in the truck bed. Bob Maynard of Energy Outfitters' elbow.

 

About 3:30 PM, the clouds let go with a few showers, and all of the exhibitors made haste to pack up their wares and get under cover. I collapsed the canopy before it got wet and we stuffed it into Darren's car. Since I had no interest in sleeping in a soggy tent, I drove the car and trailer back to the Orchard and threw all of my gear into the car, took down the tent, and drove into one of the stock barns to set up camp under a secure roof. Jacques thought this was a pretty good idea, so he joined me with his car and tent. The rain held off for several more hours, so we were able to spend a bit of time socializing with the remaining members of the fair, as most everyone else had packed up and hit the road. Jennifer Barker, the SolWest organizer, had six or eight pizzas delivered, and there was a couple of kegs of beer left from some party earlier, so we sat around in the campground "bar" and ate and drank a bit.

Richard Perez came by and I gave him the tour of the pusher in the stock barn. He requested a 2,500 word article for an upcoming issue of Home Power.

Bedded down to the sound of light sprinkles on the tin roof, secure in the knowledge that I would awake to a fairly dry tent and bedding.

 

2 tents, 2½ Rabbits, and a bicycle

 

See what happens tomorrow (Monday)

 

 

The Trip Home

 

Monday, August 30, 2001. Overnight, moderate rain had fallen intermittently, the rain on the metal roof overhead fairly noisy. I was quite happy to awake in a perfectly dry tent and bedding. The fairgrounds were deserted this early in the morning, so I used the quiet time to shower and shave in the restrooms within the classroom building.

About 8:20, while I was making some coffee, using the back of the pusher as a picnic table, Jennifer hurried in and recruited Jacques and I to help move a large TV/VCR that she had borrowed from the Forrest Service office. It needed to be back right away, so we loaded it and the metal stand into her VW transporter and headed off for the federal offices. Jacques and I followed in his car, as the TV took up all of the passenger seat in the old VW truck's front.

After unloading the equipment and setting it up inside the offices, Jacques and I went to the John Day Radio Shack store to find a replacement transistor for the controller in the EV. This part would be essential for the trip home. I managed to grab the last 2N3055 transistor on the shelf, and installed it back in the stock barn, while also packing up the tent and bedding and organizing the car for the trip home. The new semiconductor corrected the controller problem, so I put a finishing charge on the batteries, loaded the bicycle onto the rack, and we drove out of the barn into the rain. Once on the pavement, I found that I had no throttle once again, the new (and only available) part had failed after only a couple of hundred feet. I considered my options, which were to leave the car in John Day and ride home with Jacques, returning at some point to try and fix the controller in a more permanent manner, or to try and make it to Prineville and find another electronics store, and repair the problem with hopes of better luck. It would be tough going over the pass without electric assist, but I decided to try it, and we set off for the west after a series of stops to get propane for the fumigation system, put the pusher in gear (forgot), and find out why the clutch wasn't working (again).

Finally, we got to the end of town, I engaged the pusher and shut down the EV to coast. We made pretty good time in spite of being held up behind a slow motor home, which turned off at Dayville, leaving us to barrel down the road at 65 MPH, making a little dent in the trip ahead.

Considering that I had to shut off the ignition, powering down the electric drive after about 40 MPH, things were going pretty well. I did find that I had forgotten to turn the ignition key back on after the shut down a time or two, and only managed to catch the problem because the wipers wouldn't work with the key off. This could be a disastrous problem if forgotten too long, as the steering wheel lock could catch the first time I went around a corner, sending the car off the road or worse.

There seemed to be a lot of construction on the highway, and we were stopped by flagmen several times. The last time, it had been raining quite a bit and the trucks entering the highway to transport soil had left a thick layer of mud, which I had to drive the car and pusher through, coating both with thick muck.

After going through Picture Gorge, I turned off towards Kimberly on highway 19, partly to let the semi truck that had been following at a respectful distance pass, but mostly to pull over and shift the pusher into third gear for the trip up the Table Mountain pass, the first pass that I would be attempting to climb without the assistance of the electric drive.

Downshifted the pusher and got back onto highway 26, and found that I could still assist the pusher even with the EV able only to idle. Whenever my speed went below 40 MPH, I engaged the electric drive in fourth gear on the EV, and was able to hold a decent speed going up the fairly steep and twisty road. At one point, as I was entering a sharp curve, I slacked off on the pusher's throttle, but the servo didn't respond. This resulted in the trailer kacking around a little bit, swerving from side to side in a fairly alarming manner. This was the first and only time that the dire expectations of those who wonder if a single-point hitch is safe nearly came true.

At the top of the Table Mountain pass, I pulled over to put the pusher back into fourth gear for the decent, and found (yet again) that the clutch wasn't operating, and I shuddered to a stop, with Jacques behind. Even with the trailer stationary, I couldn't get the drill motor to do anything but buzz, so there was nothing else to do but pull it along, back into traffic, chugging and bucking until the speed was sufficient to make the diesel motor run.

Went through the gears on the EV, and at this point, things get a little hazy in my memory. I must have turned the EV off at some stage of the decent. As my speed increased, I decided to rub off a little of the velocity by using regenerative braking, and put the EV into fourth gear and let out the clutch. No current returned to the batteries, that's weird. Then I realized that I hadn't "started" the EV motor using the ignition key. I twisted the key over to "start" and waited for the contactor under the hood to pull in with a clunk. It didn't happen. I tried it again, letting the clutch out to see if I had just missed the familiar clunking noise of the contactor engaging. Nope, no regen. I watched the E-meter for signs of the motor starting or running, and saw only a 60 amp discharge when turning the key to "start".

By now, the car and trailer were kind of hauling ass down the steep hill, and I had to ride the brakes hard to keep from getting out of control.

At the turn off for the town of Mitchell, very close to the bottom of the pass, I pulled of the road and tried the motor again. The usual clicking of the smaller contactors was normal, but instead of the motor quickly gaining speed, I heard the big armature spin up very slowly.

I opened the controller to find that the soft-start contactor had suffered a catastrophic fire, and the inside of the controller box had been singed with flame and smoke. With Jacques watching, I tried starting the motor again. His commentary from the front of the car wasn't encouraging. "It's beginning to smoke, now the parts are glowing, it's turning orange!"

With no way to pull the pusher up to speed, and the pusher clutch not operating, I closed the hood and said: "This trip is over".

 

 

Walking the couple of hundred yards from the highway into town, I passed the city park, a card-lock fuel station, a restaurant, and then decided to inquire at the Wheeler County General Store if there was a secure place to store the car and trailer so that I could arrange to have them hauled back home in a few days' time. I explained, briefly, my situation to Michelle, the proprietor of the store, after which she led me over to the feed barn across the street. "You boys get all these get all of these motorcycles out of the way, this fellow is going to park his car here", were her orders to the guys working on about a dozen bikes in various states of disassembly. While the cycles were pushed out of the way and stored closer together in another part of the barn, I walked back up to the car and coasted it down the hill, and right through the barn door. Disconnected the trailer and pushed it out of the way on one side, as maneuvered the car into the back of the structure, so that the small forklift could still be used to access feed and salt blocks for customers purchases. I disconnected the EV's battery pack to preclude any possibility of repeat fires under the hood, then transferred the most important of my belongings to Jacques' already fairly well-packed Rabbit.

Back at the General Store, I left my name and number, and the key to the car, in case it needed to be moved. I learned that the store had a rich history, having been built in the 1880's and it once housed the assayer's office when there were numerous gold claims and mining in the area. Of course, I offered to pay for the storage of the car for however long it was there, but my payment was politely refused.

Back at the car, Jacques was filling a one gallon jug with Biodiesel for the motorcycle mechanics to try as a cleaning solvent. They were also intensely interested in the EV and pusher. I guess they don't get too many electric vehicles in these parts.

Before leaving, we paid a visit to Henry, the town black bear, who lives in a cage next to the filling station. Henry had been adopted by Mitchell when the charitable organization which raised him had gone out of business. Still a yearling, we were told that Hugh, his master, frequently wrestles with him, but many locals think that will end soon, as Henry matures, and Hugh isn't getting any bigger or younger!

I got into Jacques' Rabbit, and we headed west. My disappointment at the abrupt ending of my return trip was tempered by the gratitude that I wasn't having to hitch-hike, and at least I'd be returning home still powered by Biodiesel.

A few miles from Mitchell, we came upon the turnout for the Painted Hills Unit of the John Day National Monument. As we had planned on making the 12 mile detour from the beginning of the return trip, and had missed lunch while fooling with the EV and trailer, we turned north for a recreational side trip.

 

 

The rain had let up and the clouds parted partially to light the hills with spectacular contrasts of direct sun, soft overcast and dark shadows. The air was clean and still, and the temperature warmed appreciably when the sun came out in patches. We ate sandwiches and fruit, and got into a friendly competition to see who could reload their camera with media faster, Jacques with film, and I scrabbling in a pocket of my pack for the spare memory stick for my digital camera. I won, but not by very much.

A few other visitors made the climb up to the observation area, driving up, getting out to look and take a few photos, then jumping back into their cars to continue their vacation trips. None spent more than 5 minutes there, and we began to feel like old-timers after a half an hour. Of course, we had about 200 miles to cover ourselves, and soon made for the highway to complete the trip.

Jacques and I conversed freely for the rest of the trip, and get to know one another better. A rest stop at Belknap Hot Springs, then the final leg of the journey, arriving home after 5:00PM. Delivery right to my door, what more could I ask of anyone, much less an acquaintance of only two days? My profound thanks to Jacques for his help and support, without which I would have been facing a greater trial as a result of this breakdown.

 

Next...I finish this never-ending travelogue up and get back to pusher construction!

 

 

 

SolWest Salvage Operation

 

Tuesday, July 31st. The better part of the morning was spent trying to figure out what I was going to do to recover the EV and Pusher. After looking in the phone book, a few calls to automobile transport companies revealed that it would be very expensive to have a car-hauler pick up my vehicles. One independent operator quoted me $600 to show up in Mitchell, plus a $50 "winch fee" for each vehicle on and then off the trailer, plus any overtime that the trip entailed. Obviously, I was going to have to find a less costly method of bringing back the hardware.

Several more calls to associates who might have access to a large truck that I might borrow were also fruitless. My own internal combustion pickup is way too underpowered to haul much of a load up any hill, much less two mountain passes. Added to this was the necessity of making two trips over and back, no matter whose truck I used, one to bring back the EV and another to get the Pusher.

Next were calls to local rental yards. Eventually, I found a one-ton flatbed truck for $65/day plus 50¢/mile. They only had heavy-duty equipment trailers, so I located a 20 foot car trailer at another yard for $40/day. The equipment trailer would have worked, but I was pretty sure that I would have to use a "come along" to winch the car and Pusher onto the trailer, and I wanted a low a deck as possible for this reason.

After making the appropriate arrangements with my insurance carrier, I went late in the day to pick up the truck, then the trailer. The truck turned out to have two fuel tanks (this would be important later) and a high performance engine (which also proved useful, but expensive to feed).

At the second rental yard, the crew had a lot of trouble making the trailer lights work, until I found that the cable had been severed under the trailer's tongue. After they patched up the damage, I was on the road to home, and early to bed so I could begin the day early tomorrow to return to Mitchell.

 

August 1st, 4:00 AM. Another damned alarmed awakening. Coffee. I need coffee, but no time. Tossed the digital camera onto the pack, checked to see that I was taking enough tools, chains, etc. Out to the truck and start the engine before dawn, on the road and out of town. A stop at Fast Lane Coffee for something strong to get me over the hills. The first light of the new day appeared as I drove up McKenzie highway.

As with any other trip out of town, I have the feeling I've forgotten something. Checking the pack shows that although the digital camera is inside, the memory stick required to store photos is not inside the camera. Great.

7:00 AM. A rest stop in Sisters, parked the truck and trailer in the exact spot in front of the bicycle shop where I worked on the pusher's servo the previous Friday. More coffee, strong and bitter, but necessary. The coffee store is about the only thing stirring in Sisters at this hour. Back to the road.

Coming up McKenzie Highway, I had the distinct feeling that the truck had adequate power, but every time I looked down at the instrument panel, the fuel gauge was noticeably lower than previously. Leaving the outskirts of Sisters, I switched to the rear tank, and upon pulling into Prineville, decided to fill both tanks. Once the EV and pusher were on the car trailer, I knew that fuel consumption would increase.

No problem going over the Ochoco Pass, arrived in Mitchell about a half-hour earlier than I had projected. Good, being ahead of schedule would relieve some of the pressure of loading the car and Pusher. Peeked into the feed barn to make sure that everything was OK with the car and trailer, then walked across the street to the General Store to get the key and offer payment for the storage.

Apparently, the employees that I had talked to on Monday hadn't bothered to mention the car to the owner, who found it and the Pusher in the barn this morning, and wondered what was going on. Fortunately, I had seen where Michelle had put the key behind the counter, as the owner didn't know where to find that either. I offered to pay for the storage, and as before, was refused. Folks in these parts just don't take money for helping travelers in distress.

Having all day Tuesday to think about the failure in the controller of the EV, I wanted to try a couple of things to see if I could get it running, which would make loading it and the Pusher onto the trailer much easier. First, I bypassed the PWM board in the field circuit, and checked the field fuse, which was OK. After reconnecting the batteries, I tried the key in the ignition, and the motor ran up to speed normally. Not only did this mean that I had a less serious failure than I had feared at first, but meant that I could simply drive the EV and Pusher onto the car trailer, saving much labor, time and swearing. Of course, I still had no accelerator, but the electric motor has more than enough torque to drive up the trailer ramp. The only remaining question was whether I would have enough traction on the steel cleats of the trailer ramp to actually drive up.

In order to make this as simple as possible, I used nearly all of the blocking and small timbers that I had loaded on the truck to boost the rear end of the truck in the air, placing the wood under the truck's dual rear wheels. This would lower the rear of the trailer and make the ramps much less steep.

About the time I got ready to drive onto the car trailer, Hugh, Henry the Bear's owner arrived, and critiqued the operation. I asked him if he would be performing bear wrasslin' today, but he decided not.

The EV fairly glided up the ramps pulling the Pusher onto the car trailer with ease, and not an inch of length to spare. While I secured the car and trailer with chains and binders, Cynde, who had decided to ditch work and come along for the day, went over to the diner, and ordered us some lunch. Fortunately, the Mitchell Diner had veggie burgers on the menu, so by the time I was done and ready to rest, the food was just being served. Cynde snapped a few photos with a cheap, disposable camera, purchased at the General Store.

 

Just as I was finishing up, a truck halted in the street next to where I was working, leaving the engine running to spew dirty petroleum-diesel exhaust stink all over the area. This seemed particularly ironic, given the name of the company that owned the truck, and my Biodiesel-powered mission to SolWest. The name of the company? Here's a close-up of the door of the truck...

 

I guess I'd have been more surprised, but Fossil, Oregon is a nearby town. Still, the opportunity to capture an image of my Biodiesel-electric hybrid vehicle next to a lumbering petroleum fuel delivery truck with this name and logo was too much to pass up. Pity I was just getting ready to burn a whole lot of expensive gasoline to take the car home...

 

After finishing lunch at the cafe, as I was walking back across the street to the truck and trailer, a fellow pushing a Honda Gold Wing motorcycle straggled into town and stopped in front of the door to the feed barn where the EV had been stored. He explained that it had just quit running and seemed to have no electrical power at all. I gave him the newcomer's orientation and directed him to the General Store, and even was able to lend the encouraging advice that the town had some motorcycle mechanics in residence. Another traveler broke down and in need of assistance.

A few miles west of Mitchell, I came upon the cross road for the Painted Hills, and decided to burn a few gallons of that expensive gas to stop by for a brief visit. It wasn't until I had gotten to the end of the pavement that I realized the near danger of the action. Once upon the gravel road leading up to the viewpoint, the truck, which was carrying no load in the bed other than my bicycle, began to lose traction. I had to be very easy on the throttle, and keep moving. To stop would have be to become stuck, and I'd have had to back the truck and trailer, loaded with the EV and pusher down the fairly steep and twisty road back to the flat ground. Fortunately, we kept moving and I realized my intent to visit the Painted Hills in the EV. Sort of.

 

Only a few minutes to snap a photo or two, then back to the road. If I thought that the truck and trailer had been using fuel before, the grind up the east side of the Ococho Pass was a whole new lesson in consumption. The engine had a lot of power, but was wound out in third gear at 35 MPH. I could actually see the gas gauge drop as we climbed.

A stop for coffee in Redmond, then through Sisters and up the Santiam Pass, not quite as steep as the Ochoco. Non-stop down the McKenzie Highway, and arrived home right at 5PM. I made calls to the rental yards, as I wasn't going to get the car and Pusher unloaded and get the truck and trailer back before the 5:30 closing. Both rental yards agreed to let me keep the equipment overnight at no charge.

Bottom Line: Truck rental + mileage charge + trailer rental + gasoline = $250.00. Still a tidy fee, and I consumed the better part of two days arranging for the trip and going back to Mitchell for the recovery, but much less than the $600+ I had been quoted by someone who didn't really want the job.

 

 

 

Epilogue

Or...How I put the EV back together

 

In the ensuing few days, I began the process of repairing the Rabbit. The damage to the controller was limited to the PWM module and the step-start contactor.

The PWM module had sustained heavy burning on the printed circuit card. The positions which were previously occupied by ½ watt resistors were now blackened, carbonized craters. I disassembled the unit and carefully checked all of the components for failure. Fortunately, I had made a circuit diagram previously, so I had part values for the burned resistors. The PC board had to be scraped clean of the conductive carbon, and I coated the raw fiberglass of the board with epoxy to seal the area. A new pass transistor was also installed, and the operation checked.

The start contactor was a greater challenge. It had been scorched once before, and very little of the original silver contact blocks was left. The precious metal had been vaporized in the fire, and I attempted to file new contact area onto the armatures.

Here the top set of stationary contacts is removed, and what is supposed to be showing is bright, shiny silver contacts. In fact, there are supposed to be no areas on the top of the device that are black in color. About the only good thing about this part of the contactor is that it carries very little current, and for a very short time. These contacts are responsible for causing the electric motor to spin down very quickly when it is shut off. As such, only about 60 amps peak is carried, and this dies away as the motor spins down over about 2 seconds. If these contacts fail, the result is that the motor takes about 15 seconds to spin down when it is shut off, which is noticeable, because the car will lurch forward when the clutch is released in gear after parking. The main contacts which carry the motor start-up current were given a smoke-job, but weren't damaged in the fire.

At any rate, I filed the contacts back into as good a shape as I could make them, cleaned all of the carbon and soot off of the insulators (red areas) and reassembled it. For good measure, I installed a 60 ampere Class T fuse, which will protect the contacts in case I ever forget and release the clutch with the motor off while being pushed.

With these repairs, the EV was drivable again. The Pusher needed some work as well. I removed the mostly melted servo, and inspected it for additional damage, and took some part numbers off of the power transistors so that I could get replacements. Considering how much heat they had taken, it was surprising that they still functioned at all, however poorly the operation had seemed on the trip. The new transistors were mounted on the master controller for the trailer, along with the servo driver board. Now the power handling components would have a proper heat sink and be in a semi-controlled environment where excess heat buildup wouldn't affect their operation.

 

In the end, I designed (but have not yet built) modifications to the controller on the EV which will prevent the recurrence of the failure I experienced outside of Mitchell. I have plans to have a "kill switch" on the EV, so that I don't have to touch the ignition switch to shut down the electric drive while the Pusher is active, and an "auto-start" circuit that will automatically restart the electric motor as soon as I press the clutch pedal when the car is coasting under Pusher power. This way two problems that I identified on the SolWest trip will be rectified. No more worries about forgetting to turn the ignition key (and steering wheel lock) back to the "on" position after shutting down the electric drive, and a fail-safe auto-start to prevent me from ever trying to go into regen mode with a deactivated (and unenabled) electric drive motor.

So, That's All Folks...
THE END
(of SolWest 2001, but I'll be back in 2002)

 

 

 

Assessing the Damage:

 

Friday, July 26, 2002

Sleep in. Right... Although the ear plugs held tight against the noise of cars on the nearby street, late-arriving campers bumbling about in the Orchard as they set up their tents, and (I'm pretty sure), some impromptu fireworks displays, I was fully awakened just before dawn by some small animal attempting to scratch it's way into the tent. It took me only about 2/10 of a second to realize that I had food in there with me, and that I may have to take some defensive action. I picked up the flashlight to cosh the creature over the head if it gained entry, but after trying a few tentative scratches on the other wall, it gave up and wandered off to better pickin's. I never did figure out what it was, a racoon (grrr, I hate 'em), a cat or something else.

Now completely awake, and a little excited by the event, I was unable to do much more than lay in bed and wish for sleep, and finally gave up about a quarter to five. Dressed, ate some granola, made a cup of tea and formulated the day's plan.

Met up with Jennifer on my way to put the car back on the charger, and inquired about auto parts stores. Got some directions and got to work preparing for the day's mechanical challenges. Moved the car over to "EV Alley", near the main entrance, and plugged the car's charger into the gird-intertied photovoltaic power system, running the utility meter up a bit so that there would be something for the meter reader to count all of the PV watts against.

In the Pavilion building, I met up with Justin and Peter from Grease Works in Corvallis. They were putting in some time as Fair volunteers as trade for their booth space, so I put them to work helping me move a heavy folding table out to the EV and Pusher, explaining on the way the events of the previous day.

Darren arrived after his breakfast with the HP Crew, and delivered his pop-up canopy and several folding camp chairs.

By now, it was getting on 8:30, and I decided it was time enough to find out what kind of machine shop facilities John Day had. I rode my bike down to Main St., then west, looking for the NAPA auto parts store. Once there, I inquired about machine shop services, particularly cylinder head milling. Mark, the machinist, said no problem, bring in the head and he'd check it out and see if it was repairable. The shop had the proper milling machine to service the diesel head, one that uses stones instead of machine steel cutters. Before leaving, I purchased a container of Orange pumice hand cleaner.

One the way back to the fairgrounds, I stopped at King's variety store. Last night I had realized that although I could probably stay fairly clean while doing the work on the engine because the motor was new and the engine compartment had been thoroughly steam cleaned and scrubbed, even the smallest grease spots would ruin the clean white T-shirts that I had packed for the trip. All of these shirts were "special" with logos or other decorations that would make them impossible to replace once dirtied by crankcase oil. At Kings, I bought a pack of three white T-shirts with no decorations. I would be able to stay cool in the white fabric, and not have to worry about oily spots.

Back at the car, I began removing the intake and exhaust manifolds, the timing belt cover and timing belt, and all of the injector lines.

 

 

Not too much after I started, Jacques arrived in the Grass Car, a 1982 VW Jetta Diesel, which he had completely covered in Astroturf. Of course, the Grass Car was running on Biodiesel, and Jacques was selling "Greasy Guerrilla" T-shirts with the no-derrick logo on them. Jacques was a very important part of the 2001 SolWest trip, as he served as my chase vehicle on the return trip and provided my ride home after the car broke down for the final time in Mitchell.

The morning progressed, and I continued to tear down the stricken engine. I fully expected to find that the head would have large cracks in the combustion cylinders, but once I got it off and set it upside down on the table, I was unable to see any damage at all. Even the small cracks between the intake and exhaust valves which all VW diesels have were unchanged from when I rebuilt the head only 1,500 miles previous. I could see where combustion pressure had been forcing it's way past the head gasket and into the coolant galleries, but otherwise, it looked repairable.

It was a little before noon, and I wanted to get the head down to the machine shop so Mark could check it out. I considered that I would strap it to the back of my bicycle and ride it down, but was offered a ride instead.

At NAPA, Mark looked at the head, and measured about .008" of warp, not a lot, but enough to require milling. He told me he'd get right on it after lunch, and that I could pick it up anytime after 4PM. Before leaving the store, I checked on the availability of a replacement head gasket and head bolts. Neither were available locally, so another option would be needed.

Just as I was returning to the car at the fairgrounds, Justin came up telling me "Here, you'll need these", and handed me a set of camshaft and injection pump timing tools. Although it would be possible to do this job without these specialized tools, having them would make the job much easier and more accurate. When Justin learned that I had not been able to get a head gasket at the parts store, be made a call back home, and arranged to have Robert and Mark, who were just about to leave Corvallis for John Day, pick up the gasket and bolts before they left the valley.

 

With the cylinder head being serviced, parts on their way from afar, and a strong desire to eat lunch, I went over to the Kawanis booth and ordered a veggie-cheeseburger. Although the burger was tasty, I still can't figure out why they don't offer tomato slices or sprouts to dress up the sandwich. Geez, even lettuce would help a little.

Back at the car with my meal, the helpful fellows at Energy Outfitters came over to let me know that while I was away, the front tire on my bicycle had suffered a spontaneous blowout. Oh great, another project.

With several hours to consume waiting for the cylinder head to be finished, I began cleaning up the parts I had removed from the engine, scraping the remnants of head gasket off of the block, and doing whatever preparations I could for the reassembly.

The fair had opened to the public at 11AM, and as usual, the Pusher got it's share of attention from the attendees. As I was mostly consumed with mechanical chores, I was a bit more reserved than usual, and I kind of think that there were fewer people coming by, at least fewer that I noticed. I had the feeling that the whole EV/Pusher thing seemed a little less convincing as a viable means of transport, since I was obviously having to work on it in the middle of showing it. Several folks that I had met last year came by to say "Hi" and see the changes to the trailer that had occurred since our last meeting.

Around 4PM, I got another ride back to the machine shop to pick up the head. Total cost was $32 (including a hot tank cleaning). Justin and Peter were there, and had found a replacement intake manifold gasket, as I had damaged a corner of the one on the car while removing it. On the way back to SolWest, I stopped again at Kings, and bought an inner tube for my bike tire. I'd be lost without my wheels, walking is too time consuming, and I was making quite a few trips into town to pick up supplies.

 

 

Several additional vehicles had joined EV Alley, including a VW Caddy (pickup), a Mercedes and a newer Ford F-250 turbo diesel, both running on straight vegetable oil. Gray, the owner of the truck had struck up a conversation with Jacques, and the two of them talked me into attending dinner with them at "The Snaffle Bit", supposedly the most posh restaurant in the area. It would be several more hours before Robert and Mark arrived with the head gasket, and as the day was wearing down, I began loading loose parts into the trunk of the Pusher, putting away tools and cleaning up for the last time.

Jacques and Gray were in the Grass Car with the engine running, while I washed the oil off of my hands when a fellow came up and asked about the Pusher. I gave him the quick "This is an EV, and that trailer provides ground traction to push it forward, and I'm just about to leave for dinner, come back and visit again tomorrow, excuse me" rap, and left to join the hungry diners in the car. After we got underway, I found out that the guy was Joshua Tickell, the author of From the Fryer to the Fuel Tank, which is considered to be the bible of Biodiesel. Tickell is himself referred to as the "Father of Biodiesel". Great, I just brushed off a patron saint of renewable energy.

The Grass Car attracted lots of attention out on the street, including a wave from the Grant County Sheriff. At the restaurant, we found that they were packed, with names on the reservation list. Gray suggested that we make a reservation for Saturday so we would be assured of getting in for a meal. We drove back into John Day, and instead went into the Outpost Cafe, which was surprisingly uncrowded. Gray was concerned that he would have problems finding "California Cuisine", but he was more than satisfied to order a garden and chicken wrap sandwich. A glass of Black Butte Porter with my fish & chips. As we were finishing up, a group of familiar SolWest faces crowded into the restaurant and filled a couple of tables. My impression is that the local economy gets a pretty big boost from the SolWest fair, lots of tourist dollars out on the street all at once. It's impossible to find an available motel room this weekend.

As was getting to be the norm for this event, showered at Darren's room, then loitered at the HP suite for a little while before returning to the fairgrounds. While passing the Pavilion building, I spotted Justin and friends inside, and so I rode in to visit with them for a bit. They were having a conversation with Josh Tickell, and he was asking them pretty common questions like: " How many gallons are you reacting a week?" and "Where do you get your feedstock?" After each answer, he'd reply with a "Right on!" or "That's Awesome!". I kind of wondered why someone who had been doing Biodiesel for so many years would be so excited to hear about the mundane workings of a small co-op's system. It occurred to me that Josh was acting as the spokesman, pumping these guys up with his enthusiasm. There was nothing disingenuous about his attitude, he really seemed to enjoy putting some inertia into the Grease Works crew by being interested in what they were doing.

Back at the Orchard, "Margaritaville", the camp lounge (although we call it "The Bar", it's BYOB), was in full swing with live music broadcast over Jon's Radio Free SolWest at micropower on 96.1MHz. I stayed for a few minutes and watched the festivities, then headed over to my tent. Since I should be accustomed to the camp, and the Pusher progress had been adequate so as to not concern my slumber, I looked forward to catching up on some ZZZ's. The earplugs went in and the lights went out.

 

 

 

What's That Smell???:

 

Saturday, July 27, 2002

Sleep in. Right... What day is this? What page am I on?? Once again, before the first light of the new morning, I was awakened. This time not by a sound. This time by a smell. A familiar smell. A strong familiar smell. A strong unpleasant familiar smell. A nearby strong unpleasant familiar smell. A nearby strong unpleasant familiar smell of SKUNK!!!! This time I laid in bed not considering whacking the creature with the flashlight in case it wanted into the tent, but fully considering it could have anything it wanted after I made a new exit in the back of the tent and had run some good distance away.

No tent flap scratching ensued, so I eventually drifted back to sleep, only to wake up a short time later as twilight began outdoors, to still have the same odor in the air. It wasn't like the skunk had sprayed and the smell was lingering in the air, but more like nearby stinky skunk butt prowling around the campground.

Drifted back off to sleep, and eventually got up about a quarter to six. Breakfast, tea, and back to work on the Pusher out in the exhibition area. Sometime during the night, someone had slipped a VW head gasket under the corner of my tent. Hmmm, the head gasket fairy had visited (thanks, Bruce, even though it was a gasoline engine part, the thought was appreciated).

Expecting to get finished by afternoon, I put the cam followers back into the cylinder head, and began to assemble the cam shaft and retaining caps. Bob, who was camping next to me decided to come by and check the progress, and asked if I had checked the cam line. "Well, no, should I?" Of course, if the head was warped, then the five camshaft bearings are no longer in a straight line, and need to be line bored to correct the "bow" that the cam will experience when it is torqued down. This necessitated a trip to the machine shop, where I learned that they didn't have a line boring machine, so there was little they could do about this problem.

Bob had me pick up some long strips of 400 grit wet-or-dry sandpaper and some brake cleaning fluid. We were going to hand-turn the camshaft bearing journals to provide additional clearance to allow for the bow in the bearing line. I thought this was going to be impossible with hand tools, but he assured me that he had done this type of repair many times, and while line boring was preferable, this would at least insure that the bearing journals would not wear excessively.

What we ended up doing was resting the rear of the cam in the head backwards so that it could be turned in free air with a ratchet, and then Bob used the sandpaper as a strop to polish the number 1, 3, & 5 cam journals to remove material. Our first session before noon was pretty productive, but we ran out of sandpaper, so Bob left to attend a lecture, while I rode the bike back down to NAPA to get more abrasive.

At some point, Tomas and Ian of Eugene Biosource showed up on site and loaded a bunch of flyers on the table.

I had expected to attend Josh Tickell's lecture on Biodiesel at 12:30PM, but I didn't want to miss Bob in case he came back to finish the job, and so I stuck around and gave "the tour" to onlookers. Bob returned about 1:30, and we did some additional clearancing on the journals, using Plastigauge to check our progress. Finally, the clearances seemed right, and we torqued the cam shaft into place and checked the rotation for binding. It felt loose and easy to turn, so I resumed installing the valve gear and got ready to put the head on the engine.

 

 

The rest of the afternoon held no new disastrous surprises. At one point, Gray was going to the auto parts store to look at electric fuel pumps for his SVO conversion on the truck, so I tagged along, purchasing four quarts of oil and a plastic drain pan so that I could empty the most likely fried oil in the crankcase sump and put in some new.

Just as we were leaving David arrived with his Biodiesel refinery trailer, which was for sale. This trailer is very well equipped, and has everything needed to produce batches of Biodiesel in 12 gallon quantities. All aspects of safety have been considered including fire suppression, first aid, personal safety (goggles, gloves, rubber aprons), Material Safety Data Sheets for all chemicals, and an eye wash station, which you can see on the left-hand cabinet door which is open. Dave was present at last year's event, and held a lecture on Biodiesel production procedures.

The cylinder head went back into place on the engine block, and I secured it using the new head bolts that had been delivered from Corvallis yesterday. I did have some head scratching trying to decipher the torque wrench specs that were supplied with the head gasket, as they were universal, covering a wide range of head gasket and engine types. After conferring with three other people to make sure that I was reading the abbreviated instructions correctly, I set to work with the torque wrench, which I had put into the car with the tools before I left home. As I was loading the wrench into the car, I asked myself why I was taking it along, as it was very unlikely to be needed with the trailer running so well after the recent rebuild. Yet another example of cosmic intervention, I almost left it at home...

It was now late afternoon, and I'd gotten the cylinder head installed, and began attaching wires, hoses and other fixtures that will be needed to complete the job. I'd hoped to have the engine running by this evening, but there is still a bit to do before I can try to start it.

Justin and Peter of Grease Works had been planning a meeting for this evening for several months. Anyone with an interest in Biodiesel was invited, particularly those who wish to start or belong to a biofuels co-op model. About 40 people or so show up in the open-air classroom to participate. I misunderstood and instead first went to the Sale Barn, where Windy Dankoff was just beginning a presentation of solar water pumping. Just before taking a seat, it became apparent that I was either in the wrong place, or here at the wrong time. Grabbed my bike and shifted over to the large canopy on the grass and settled down next to Jacques with the digital camera ready to take a few images.

 

 

They were just beginning to assemble a list of subjects to cover during the meeting. Jacques got a nice plug at the top of the board with his grass-car.com address. There were many questions about glycerin disposal, tier one certification, fee fatty acids, and a variety of other subjects which showed that the participants were mostly experienced with the production mechanics of Biodiesel. Josh Tickell sat in, interjecting a few facts when appropriate. Tomas and Ian of Eugene Biosource were also in attendance, you can just see the tops of their heads at the bottom of the image.

About 20 minutes into the meeting, after the agenda had been set and discussion began, the compact flash card in the camera became full, so I bowed out to go to the tent and get the spare card. On the way back, I got the feeling that I might be better off using this time to begin installing the intake and exhaust manifolds on the engine. Using my time wisely is important, because Jacques and Gray and I are going out to dinner at The Snaffle Bit, tonight, using the reservations we made last night.

Dinner was pretty much a bust, except for the free beer that the waitress gave us because our order got messed up.

Back at the motel, the HP crew was in full swing, with Darren supplying two 5 gallon soda containers of home made dark ale. The party had spilled out onto the balcony, and exhibitors, lecturers, attendees and magazine folk alike talked, ate and took in the warm summer night. Fortunately, most of the motel was occupied by Solwest people, so there weren't any complaints about the bit of noise the socializing caused.

Another ½ glass of beer for me, and it was time for bed. It had been a long day, and tomorrow would be another. In the parking lot of the Motel, I found that my bike had another flat tire, this time, the rear. Walked it back to the fairgrounds. Passing through the campground, a fair bit of partying was taking place at Margaritaville, and there was another group of people getting some live music going on one side of the camp.

Earplugs in and lights out for me.

 

 

 

Sunday Go-to-Meetin'

 

Sunday, July 28, 2002

This morning, nothing tried to get into my tent, no frightening smells assaulted my nose. This could actually turn out to be a good day...

As usual, some breakfast, tea, dental hygiene and back to work on the Pusher, the final "push" to get it running again.

Over the course of the last three days, I'd begun to become the event celebrity. Folks would come by every few hours to see what progress had been accomplished on the engine, exchange a few pleasantries, and move along to the next lecture or seminar. As the engine began to have a finished appearance, excitement began to grow, and several people wanted to know when the "big event" would take place, the starting of the engine. I told each of them that I didn't really need or want a big crowd around when I tried starting it, mostly because if it didn't work, they weren't going to enjoy my reaction.

The wife of one of the exhibitors whom I am familiar with asked if I needed anything from the store, and so I was able to get a replacement tube for the tire on my bicycle. Now I have two brand-new tubes, let's hope that's enough for the rest of the weekend!

The last of the parts were in place, I had reconnected all of the removed wiring and hoses, and put the battery on solar charge using a small panel that Darren had bought at the silent auction. It was time to fire it up. Before this could be done, the injector lines needed to be bled, which is a pretty straight forward procedure. This time, however, the injection pump would not draw any fuel up out of the tank. This was most puzzling, and I brushed it off to the fuel lines draining back into the tank from being disconnected for the last three days. The owner of one of the cars running on straight vegetable oil had purchased a small, battery-operated pump, and brought it over so we could prime the injection pump with Biodiesel pumped from a styrofoam drinking cup. Once the pump had a prime, it pulled fuel from the tank, the injectors bled and it was time to try actually starting the engine.

Oh, except one small oversight. I didn't have any antifreeze for the cooling system. Rode my now newly retubed bike back to the NAPA store, hoping to find them open. They were, and I bought a gallon of antifreeze, stopping by the grocery store on the way back for two gallons of distilled water. Filled the coolant reservoir with a 50/50 mix of antifreeze and the distilled H²0.

Now the moment of truth. There was no marching band, no jugglers, no midgets doing summersaults, no elephants balancing on giant balls, no fanfare. The engine just started and ran like it had just been shut off a few minutes beforehand. Oh, no champagne, either...

By this time, it was 3 PM or so. After cleaning up my tools, I began taking the rest of my outdoor workshop apart. There was a considerable amount of stuff to find places for, debris and clutter to dispose of, nasty used motor oil to pour back into the containers the new oil came out of, and someone had left two containers of reacted Biodiesel from Josh Tickell's demonstration on my table. What am I going to do with that?

The rest of the Solwest event was beginning to pack up, Darren came by for his pop-up tent, and Joe Schwartz stopped by to take some digital photos for an upcoming Home Power magazine article.

Now it was time to take a test drive to see if everything still worked as it should. I approached Richard Perez to see if he wanted to accompany me, but he was busy knocking down the Home Power booth and organizing the truck for the trip back to Agate Flat. I pretty much just walked up the the nearest person I could find and asked if she wanted to go for a drive. "Sure, why not" was the reply, so we set off to the south, me and a prefect stranger who was intrigued enough by the offer to travel a short distance with someone she never met before.

The operation of the Pusher was normal by all accounts, and when I checked the engine in Canyon City a few miles up the road, everything looked fine.

Arriving back at SolWest, I ran into Michael Welch of HP, and asked if he wanted to accompany me on a longer, high speed run in the car. He did, and we set off to the west, accelerating to 60 MPH once outside the John Day city limits. Again, the Pusher ran fine and no cooling system problems were noted. We turned around at the entrance to the landfill, and jetted back into town.

Once back, I ran into Victor, who was just getting ready to leave. The car he was traveling in had had some aerodynamic enhancements added in the form of a wedge-shaped nose piece that cut wind resistance considerably. He claimed that fuel mileage was much higher with this addition. Yet another example of home-brew innovation, although the resemblance to Darth Vader is kind of spooky.

Victor's companion had entered in the Electrathon race. That's the race car on the trailer.

Things at the fairgrounds were winding down pretty fast. One exhibit that I had been hearing a lot about was the solar telescope, which allowed one to look directly at the sun through a very sophisticated and expensive filter device. I managed to get over to the 'scope before it was taken down and was treated to an astounding view of the sun, with huge arcs of plasma shooting a great distance from the body of the star. Sunspots were clearly visible, and if viewed for a length of time, both the spots and the flares could be seen to be in motion. The filter that made this direct observation of the sun possible was powered (naturally) by photovoltaic panels, producing electricity from the very same sunlight that I was observing.

Back at the tent, I spent some time stowing excess gear, putting away tools and generally packing up as much stuff that wouldn't be needed into the car as I could. This evening, I've been invited to join the HP crew for a small dinner party at their motel room, with tortillas and tacos cooked up by Daniel.

I was planning on plugging the car in to charge at the outlets in the center of the fairgrounds, so I drove the EV over to the motel, paring at the base of the stairs going up to the room. Inside, all of the familiar faces were in attendance, some helping to prepare the meal be chopping onions, grating cheese or handing out brews. A fine meal was soon served up buffet-style, and once again the balcony outside the room was transformed into a party deck.

After a suitable number of tall tales were told, and old times remembered, folks began to depart, some for their motel rooms or tents, and others to seek out some night life. Windy Dankoff was my passenger on the way back to the Orchard campground, where he joined the celebrants around an orange highway cone with a flashlight under it in Margaritaville (their own version of a safe-n-sane campfire in this time of extreme fire danger), playing his flute with several other musicians.

Sooner than not, I stole away to make my bed and get some sleep after plugging the car in to charge at an outlet in the center of the fairgrounds.

 

 

 

Monday: Fire Watch

 

July 29, 2002

Up at a reasonable hour, still mostly before anyone else though. Struck the tent, packed up the car, readied the trailer. Stopped into the office to check with Jennifer about road conditions. Jacques had left fairly early on Sunday, concerned that the fires to the west might close Highway 20, and force him to drive down Highway 97 to catch Highway 58 over the Willamette Pass, a very indirect route, particularly when the destination is Corvallis. The last news Jennifer had heard was that although the fires weren't threatening the road, closure was imminent, as Black Butte Ranch was likely to be evacuated, and fire crews and residents leaving the area would need unobstructed access to the highway. A check on the laptop connected to the internet confirmed the bad news, the road was now closed to all but emergency vehicles and residents leaving the area.

This new development was not particularly welcome, especially because it would add many miles to my return home, and take me over unfamiliar roads. The rumor was that Highway 242, the McKenzie Pass, was closed to all trailer traffic, and my vehicle certainly qualified on that account.

Jon had offered to be my chase vehicle, and after meeting up this morning, we made plans as best as possible for the trip back. He began packing up the last of his test, radio gear, and other belongings, and I had an early lunch at the car, parked at the Pavilion building to charge up and be close to any late breaking news about the road situation changing, perhaps Highway 20 reopening. After eating, I made a last trip into town to finish up some chores and get ready for the trip.

The first stop was to purchase some fuel. The trip to John Day had been a thirsty one for the Pusher, I had consumed nearly ten gallons of Biodiesel, and had to top up the tank with foul-smelling petroleum diesel. The gas station attendant was fascinated to be pumping fuel into a trailer, and the customer at the other side of the service island was a SolWest attendee who was filling up his motor home for the trip into the Willamette Valley. He seemed fairly unconcerned to be forced to drive the extra distance south to detour around the fire, considering it just another scenic side trip. I explained a bit about the pusher to him, we said our farewells, and set off to the next stop, a beer, wine and cigarette store to buy two bags of ice.

At the NAPA auto parts store, I dropped off the four quarts of used motor oil that came out of the Pusher to be recycled, and then ran into the motor home driver again, shopping for some oil or other product. I thanked the parts counter guys for their patience and assistance this weekend, and then showed the RV'er my ghetto air conditioning in the EV. The two bags of ice that I had bought went into the air duct under the hood, known as the "rain tray". All of the air entering the car's interior through the vents has to travel through this duct, and in order to get inside the car, the air has to now travel over and through the ice!

 

 

The rain tray is lined with "bubble plastic", some leftovers from a package that I unwrapped after receiving a shipment. The bubble plastic insulates the ice from the car body and forms kind of a dam to keep melt water from dripping into the passenger compartment vent inlet. Not shown here are two additional rigid plastic covers like the one you seen in the center of the rain tray. These help keep the ice isolated from the hood, and help direct the air around a greater area of the ice. There was room for one, and possibly two more bags of ice in the tray. I probably should have just stuffed it full, but since this was the first time I'd tried this, I opted for the two bags I already had as the initial experiment. The rain tray has a pair of drain vents at the bottom, and is designed to carry away water entering through the vent grille in the rear of the hood, so the melt water from the ice will pose no problem.

Back at the fairgrounds, I hooked up with Jon, and we prepared to leave. Our plan was to go as far as Redmond, then check the road closures and make a decision then as to what we would do.

Started the EV and Pusher, and pulled out of the Grant County Fairgrounds. sometime around noon, headed into an uncertain route west.

By all indications, the Pusher was performing just fine. I kept an eagle eye on the temp gauge and settled into driving mode. The ice in the rain tray did make the air coming through the vents cool, but it wasn't like having real air conditioning, I couldn't drive with all of the windows rolled up. Just having cold air blowing on me from the dash vents was welcome. At Dayville, I pulled over to have a look at the engine and confirm that everything was as it should be. Back on the road, we got stuck behind an old, slow motor home, without any good opportunities to pass.

At the junction of highway 19, I pulled out at a turnout to allow two logging trucks to pass, and to check the engine again. This junction is at the bottom of the east side of the Mitchell grade, my tough first test on the newly repaired engine, and I didn't want any tailgating trucks. While we were stopped, I asked Jon to follow a bit farther back, as I could actually feel the drag induced by his vehicle behind mine.

The Mitchell grade didn't prove to be much of a problem. The temperature gauge did rise, actually a bit higher than I was comfortable with, but it quickly fell when the load was eased at the summit. We descended Table Mountain, pulling into the tiny town of Mitchell to do another engine check and to use the restrooms located across from the city park. Hugh was in the cage with Henry (see my 2001 SolWest adventure for details), along with a couple of tourist's kids, feeding the now adult bear some carrots. Said "Hi" to Hugh, and went back to the car, where I managed to step in some gooey tar that had melted in the hot sun. Great way to keep my upholstery clean. Back to the road after a snack of dried fruit.

Ochoco Pass made the engine temp rise again, but no problems associated with over temperature. I've decided that I need to put the dual radiator fan setup on the trailer to help keep the coolant temperature where it's supposed to be.

Prineville, then Redmond, where we stopped for coffee and to formulate the next part of the trip. If it was going to be necessary to take highway 97, we would make that connection here. I stopped a pickup in the parking lot, and asked the driver if highway 20 had reopened. He said it hadn't. I asked about trailer traffic over highway 242, and was told that small trailers are allowed. Jon and I decided to go the 20 miles to Sisters and inquire there about traffic over the Cascades. If we needed to take 97, we wouldn't need to come back to Redmond, but could take 20 to Bend.

Things seemed normal enough in Sisters, so we pressed forward, taking the cut off just outside of town to go over the McKenzie Pass. A little ways up the road, a Forest Service vehicle was set up as a check point in the road, probably to keep too-large of vehicle from trying to use the highway ahead.

Highway 242, the McKenzie Pass, is some of the most picturesque landscape in the state. it's also one of the most treacherous roads in the state. Typically, it's closed from November until May or June due to snow. The eastern side of this highway was fairly tame, with many tight turns, but not too steep of a roadway. I was able to keep ahead of traffic with no problems, using the Pusher and electric drives to provide the power needed to reach the top.

 

 

As you climb this road, you enter into wilderness, with frequent openings of lava fields towards the top. At the summit, the trees and rocks give way to an immense expanse of lava fields. A visitor's center has been built at the top, with a large rock observatory crowned by a bronze disc engraved with pointers to landmarks both near and far. Here you see a sample of the vista. Most of the views are of more interesting things like majestic mountain peaks, but here I've focused on the reason for our detour. What you see on the horizon is smoke from the fire outside of Black Butte that closed the highway. This photo makes the lava field, trees and nearby hills look kind of tiny, but a person out in this landscape would be completely lost in the photo by the scale of the surroundings.

Anyhow, after getting a bit of exercise climbing the several flights of stairs to the observatory and snapping some photos, we're about ready to get back to the road. The exercise was interesting because of the elevation, we're over a mile up! A new record for the EV and Pusher. The weather at the top was obviously clear and sunny, but because of the altitude and the lack of humidity, quite comfortable.

Since the usual route from the valley to the high country was closed, there were a lot of visitors to the summit this day. It would be interesting to return sometime when the "fast" route is open and see just how much traffic this scenic route gets normally.

 

 

The EV had consumed a fair number of ampere-hours from the battery pack while climbing this mountain, but home is all downhill from here. We got underway and began the descent along the narrow, winding road that snakes off of the ancient volcanoes and into the lush McKenzie River valley. This side to the Cascades would be a real challenge to the drivetrain on any vehicle, but I'd never want to attempt climbing the road we were now coasting down. The EV's regenerative braking did a fine job of keeping the car and trailer's velocity under control, and it was seldom necessary to use the brakes to maintain a safe speed. Of course, the bonus was that I was also replacing all of those ampere-hours that the car consumed on the climb to the top. Many switchback, dogleg, and horseshoe turns in the road made it amply clear why trailers "aren't recommended" on this highway.

As we descended, the air became hotter, and the humidity rose dramatically. Our pleasantly warm high desert day was rapidly becoming a valley scorcher. After being in such low humidity for the last few days, it was a shock to remember that your body reacts to wet heat by pumping out a lot of moisture of it's own. Over in John Day, a tiny bit of perspiration goes a long way towards keeping you cool. Here on the valley side, you can sweat buckets and still not get any relief.

Eventually, highway 242 joins highway 126, just a bit south of Belknap Hot Springs. Jon has never visited there, so I made a short detour to stop for a walk around the grounds, and to get a bit of a rest from all of the steering wheel twisting we had both just done.

The next 60 miles was completely uneventful. Jon and I parted company in the parking lot of a market in Springfield just before we got on the freeway to our respective homes. Jon had another 45 minutes still to drive to get to Albany.

Arrived to find everything at home in order. Opened all of the windows to let out the day's pent-up heat and began unloading the car and trailer.

Next year, I'm going to surprise everybody. I'm going to actually drive to and from SolWest 2003 without any breakdowns. Third time's a charm...

Oh, it just goes on and on... Read why I didn't take the EV and Pusher to SolWest 2003: EV Pusher meets the Eco-Trekker

 

 

 

EV Pusher meets the Eco-Trekker

Continued

 

July 31, 2003, Steamboat Springs Campground.

Morning, and I'm the only one up. All of the tents here are occupied by people attending the wine convention at the Inn, and it seems that they all stayed up well past midnight and probably had a wee bit of their trade to drink. The Eco-Trekker RV is silent, and Eddy is still wrapped up in his sleeping bag on the ground.

 

Before he left for Crater Lake, I mentioned to Thomas that he should probably put up his tent while it was still light, but the push was on to get to the lake before the light gave out, so when he got back with the rest of the ET crew and the van, it was fully dark. No problem, I found him peacefully asleep in his Honda MiniRV.

 

One-by-one, the crew awakened, organized their brain cells, and turned their attention to coffee and breakfast. Apparently, Thomas had been promised some Vegemite, so the electric toaster was brought out, plugged into the RV's electrical system, and white bread toast slathered with butter and flavored yeast extract (Vegemite) was the featured fare. Since Vegemite is vegetarian friendly, I produced some wheat bread and made a few slices for myself. It's not bad, but you have to be careful to not use too much, it's quite salty. Sally showed us the proper technique for spreading it along the top of the toast in just the right amount. Search Google for more information about Vegemite than you could ever want to know...

Ray and Teresa left in the van to scout some locations and Shaun washed the dishes from last night's meal, carefully drying each plate, bowl and pan with his own personal bath towel. Teresa would re-wash the entire lot later when she cleaned up the RV. I remarked that Shaun had already washed them, to which she replied that she needed no other reason to re-wash them, because she had seen before how Shaun washes dishes....

One project that I had not managed to finish before leaving for this trip was getting the cruise control brake interlock circuit working. For some time, I've been concerned about the possibility that I might have to make a panic stop in the EV while using the Pusher, and that I wouldn't have time to turn down the throttle knob to stop the trailer's pushing the car into danger. This concern became even more acute when I learned that Shaun would be driving the EV, so I designed and installed a circuit that cuts the throttle to the Pusher when the brake lights of the Pusher come on. No throttle control commands will function until a "resume" button is pressed on the Pusher's control panel. On the bench, the circuit worked fine, but after installing it in the car, I couldn't get the brake lights to fault the throttle. I had a pretty good idea what the problem was, and brought some resistors of a different value to swap into the control to see if I could get it working.

While Shaun and the crew did some filming in the creek bed (more on this in a moment), I used my AC inverter and soldering iron to change the value of the circuit, and got it working perfectly. Now, touching the brake pedal shuts the Pusher's engine down to an idle, and the oil pressure warning light flashes to indicate that the cruise control is faulted and needs to be reset using the resume button.

While I was putting away my tools, I noticed Marty and Eddy trying to strangle a tree with a length of rope. What they were trying to do was to pull the top of the tree aside so that Ray could get a shot of Shaun down by the creek from the roof of the RV. Although it was a fairly skinny bush of a tree, they weren't having very much luck pulling it aside. The action down in the creek was some footage of Shaun "discovering" the Pusher on the web, using his Mac computer power by a portable PV panel. Of course, the entire thing was staged, not only was there no internet access in the campground due to the steep ravine which prevented the RV's satellite uplink from working, but there was no sun this early in the day to make the solar panel operate. No Problems, mate, both issues will be taken care of in post production. A photo of the car will be chroma-keyed onto Shaun's laptop screen, and the aperture of the camera will make the shadowed creek bed look like mid day sun.

Anyway, after Shaun "discovers" the EV and Pusher on the "web" (insert special effects here), he "calls" me on my "cell phone", walking up and down over the stones of the creek bed, talking animatedly, setting up a "meeting" so that he can use the EV and Pusher to continue his "trip". Are you getting the feeling that this bit of video I'm participating in is a bit less that a fully accredited documentary?

Round about noon, I was in my tent eating a banana or something, when Sally walked up and said that we would be leaving. I stepped out and zipped up the tent fly behind me, and she said we were leaving, as in not coming back, and sent Marty and Eddy to help me carry my stuff, bedding and tent over to the RV to be packed away in the garage, so that the EV could be empty for filming.

Shaun would be riding with me as far as the Steamboat Inn, where I would turn the car over to him for some "driving shots". This would work out well, as I needed to show Shaun how driving the car was different from yesterday, now that the cruise control fault circuit was working.

At the Inn, I switched over to the van, giving Shaun last-minute instructions about the operation of the car. We drove up the road a bit to a place where there was an accessible rock outcropping that overlooked the road, a perfect place to set up the camera and tripod. Eddy and I continued up the road after letting Sally and Ray out, parking the van in a turnout that didn't appear in the camera's view. Shaun drove the EV and pusher past the camera location a number of times, Sally calling on the two-way radio for repeat takes when Shaun had cars following, or traffic approaching from the opposite direction entered the shot. Eventually, Ray was satisfied with the takes, and I got back into the EV with Shaun to travel to the next location.

Shaun was actually doing very well controlling the Pusher, and had picked up on the cruise control's fault function very quickly. He seemed to have the driving of the car figured out, and I snuck a few glances at the temperature gauge to make sure the Pusher wasn't overheating in the mid-day temperature.

The next shot was set up at the end of a long straightaway. I got out of the car at a turnout at about the middle of the long stretch, and hid myself out of the camera's aperture by moving back into the trees. Shaun again made several passes, and at one point, complained that they were "just bloody driving shots" and that Ray should have enough to be satisfied by now.

At the end of this session, Shaun circled back to pick me up, and we continued to the "rendezvous" location, where Shaun and I would "meet up" for the transfer of the car and trailer to him. Remember, this was all being shot out-of-sequence.

The final shooting location was a wide apron of pavement alongside the Umpqua River, where there would be ample room for us to pull the car over, set up the camera, and get all of the angles involved for the shot.

Shaun had made a cardboard sign that read "Mr. Sharkey", which had a cartoon of a diver's legs and feet sticking out of a sharks mouth. The idea here was that Shaun was going to stand alongside the road flashing this sign at passing cars as though he was trying to flag me down. That's exactly what he did too, while Ray filmed the whole thing. Most motorists just stared at this wild-haired, tall Aussie wearing a solar panel on his back, jumping up and down waving a sign at them. None of the stopped. Well, almost none of them, one car did stop to take a picture of the river, and Sally had to go over and shoo them away, as they were in the shot, and Shaun was supposed to be deserted, in the middle of nowhere, trying to hitch a ride from some guy with a weird EV/Hybrid combination.

Now it was time for my "Grand Entrance". Eddy dropped a wireless microphone transmitter into the pocket of my shorts, then taped a small mic inside my shirt using gaffer's tape. Ray piled into the back of the EV with the Sony digital camera, and we drove downriver a mile or so, with Ray taking shots of the instruments on the dash, my hands controlling the Pusher remote, and views out the windshield. As we approached Shaun, standing alongside the road, he went into a frenzy, jumping up and waving his sign at the car. Ray trained the camera on him as I brought the car to a halt alongside him.

We did this several times until Ray was satisfied that he had enough stock to pass the editing process, then he set up the camera in a position to view the EV approaching Shaun, and I repeated the drive-up a couple of more times solo. Each time, I got out of the car, shook hands with Shaun and greeted Sparky the dog as though it was our first meeting.

The next bit was me being filmed while I explained the Pusher to Shaun. What Sally wanted was for Shaun and me to both jump up on the towing tongue of the Pusher and stand up there while Shaun made exclamations about "Look Sparky!! It's an EV Pusher!!!" I kind of thought he whole jumping on the tongue thing was a bit overdone, and just didn't do it. Shaun did though, and while he's already about 6" taller than me, while standing on the trailer, he was about two feet taller, meaning Ray had to pan the camera up and down between us to compensate for the height difference.

They wanted me to show Shaun the engine, the trunk with the fuel tank and shift lever, etc, but DID NOT want me to explain why a pusher trailer was a useful piece of equipment for en electric car driver, the operating modes the hybrid was capable of, total possible range of the vehicle, or anything else about the car. In fact, they didn't want, and did not take any video images of the EV's under-hood electric drive components, batteries, or really, any images of the EV at all, outside of what was necessary to show the trailer. I was told that electric vehicles were covered in the previous segment, this segment was about Biodiesel, and I needn't bother with any EV-related information. Also included in this part of the filming was me turning the car over to Shaun, giving him brief operating instructions, and him driving away, leaving me standing on the side of the road, waving goodbye. I guess that I wasn't a very significant part of the plot after Shaun had the car, as no explanation of what I was supposed to do to get home was given....

A good long bit of time was spent installing a small digital video camera inside the car, using a suction-cup mounting device that was placed on the inside of the windshield. A microphone was taped to the sun visor above the driver's seat, and the cable tucked out of sight. I put the passenger seat back in the reclined position so that Ray would have more room to wield the big camera. We loaded Sparky into the EV, Ray and Shaun got in, and then drove off. Sally, Eddy and I stood around for about 15 minutes in the hot sun, with very little shade to block the July heat. I finally climbed down the slope to the river and soaked my feet, eventually joined by the other two. The temperature of the Umpqua was not nearly as temperate as that of Steamboat Creek a few miles upriver. We splashed about for 40 minutes or so before Shaun, Ray and my car reappeared. I have no clue where they went, what they did, or what the finished video will show while they were gone.

The filming completed, we were now going to go into Roseburg and join up with the rest of the crew and the RV, which had gone into town to offload the Corbin Sparrow EV that was in the RV's garage, and connect to the satellite uplink so they could send some e-mails. Shaun got into the passenger seat, and I started the EV's electric drive for the first time today, running the car in parallel mode. Shaun had been doing all of the driving for the filming using only the Pusher for power, as I was reluctant to turn him loose on the EV's operating modes without a lot more training.

We met up with the RV in town, and then nicked off in the EV to a coffee kiosk for some caffeinated beverages. Once back at the RV, which was parked in the lot of a closed-down industrial building, I attracted the attention of one of the local VW enthusiasts, who couldn't resist the appearance of a vintage VW Rabbit towing an even older VW trailer.

After half an hour or so, the RV was made road-worthy, the satellite uplink dish returned to it's traveling position, and we made our way to Interstate 5 for the trip to Eugene, the EV/Pusher in front, the van following and the RV bringing up the rear.

 

Antenna flag flapping in the breeze on the RV

 

Onward, to Eugene...

 

 

 

EV Pusher meets the Eco-Trekker

...Continued

 

Originally, Shaun was going to ride with me on the trip to Eugene, and we would continue to Corvallis the next day after an overnight at my property. Shaun and Teresa decided that the time on the road would be best spent as a crew conference, so I drove north alone in the EV and Pusher. Since the RV was running on Biodiesel, Shaun's transportation was being provided by renewable fuel, so the trip mission was preserved (coast-to-coast on no petroleum fuel).

The drive was uneventful, although quite hot, mid 90's. I emptied the windshield washer bottle of water into the radiator on the Pusher, misting the front of the radiator using the new system I had installed to help keep the coolant temperature moderate. Eddie and Ray followed in the diesel van, and the rest of the crew tagged along in the RV up the interstate.

After an hour or so of driving, we arrived at my place. The RV was pulled in next to the Crown bus, the satellite dish deployed, the extension cord plugged into the outlet by the back of the bus, and the preparations for the night's activities got started. Tomas arrived with a gas BBQ grille and Eddie and Ray took the van up to the market to purchase steaks, fish, vegetables, and lots of beer and cider. I can't remember now who hatched the idea, but a night of food and fellowship followed.

The back deck/ramp of the RV made a perfect platform to use as a temporary kitchen. I set up a step ladder on the expansive deck with a couple of clamp lights for illumination. Eddy showed off his skills as Chef, and a sumptuous meal followed.

Since the flat-plate water heater had been operating for the entire day, the hot tub was ready for use. Since my tub is actually a very long cast-iron, claw-foot bathtub located behind a hedge of bushes in the yard, it's really only suitable for one person at a time, unless you want to get very friendly with the other user(s). I offered the tub around to the crew, but only Marty seemed interested. I lit the kerosene lamp next to the tub and left him to soak away some cares. Apparently he enjoyed it enough to not hurry, as he was submerged for quite a while, nursing a Hornsby's hard cider to keep the heat bearable.

Things wound down about 10:30PM, and I shut off the lights on the back of the RV and we all slipped off to our respective beds...

August 1, 2003, at home.

During the dinner and conversation last night, Teresa kept reminding everyone that the RV needed to be packed up and ready for the road by no later than 8AM this morning so that they could be on their way to Portland.

I got up about 7AM, and noticed no activity around or within either the RV or the camera van. Took care of some of my morning chores. 8AM, still no signs of life. About a quarter to nine, Ray and Eddy were up and asking to use the shower and wash some clothes in the laundry. They rooted around inside the RV getting some breakfast and stirred the rest of the crew into wakefulness.

After some Vegemite and coffee, a new plan was formulated. With my consent, the crew and vehicles would stay here today, and some catching up would be attempted, along with business calls, e-mails, and production duties. The foray up the valleys of the Umpqua River had limited both cellular telephone use and internet access, and contacting the office in California, as well as making calls ahead to some of the other locations that the crew would visit was planned.

 

8AM, No lights on inside

 

Marty had some concerns about a leaking front wheel bearing on the RV and wanted to contact the local Ford dealership to see if it needed to be brought in for service. He was told to keep an eye on the lubricant level, but to not be overly concerned. Working together with my help, we installed some brackets to secure cargo in the garage portion of the RV, coiled and stowed some hoses and a pump used to transfer Biodiesel, and off-loaded a 55 gallon barrel belonging to SeQuential.

Eddy used my shop vacuum to clean up the inside of the camera van, and then he attempted to use some silicone sealant to waterproof an expensive underwater camera enclosure that was supposed to allow the Sony DV camera to be used underwater. Not too far into that project, he called the enclosure's manufacturer and told them he was sending it back. "$5,000 is too bloody much to pay for a camera case that needs caulking to keep it from leaking" was what he decided.

Ray needed to make duplicates (dubs) of the digital film footage that they had shot over the previous few days. I set him up in my home theatre, as it was the coolest, least dusty place available, and as it has actual furniture, it was comfortable as well. Ray watched the video images on a portable DVD player's screen as the copies were made, insuring that they were fit to be sent back to the production company's main studios.

Teresa had expressed some interest in using the bath last night, but Marty beat her to it, so I offered to drain and refill the tub with some fresh water, heated using the LP gas instantaneous heater. I showed her the tub and the sheet of corrugated roofing that an be used as a gate to close the fence for privacy. She decided to add some essential oils and a cup of milk to the water to make a complete beauty bath.

While Teresa soaked, Sally and Shaun needed a quiet place to do some interviews that would be used as voice-overs in the series. About the quietest place on my property is my Housetruck, so I unplugged the phone and left them inside to do some recording with a tape machine and microphone.

Last night's feast and festing had left a lot of debris in the yard. The local yellow jackets had discovered the fish bones, and there was a mighty pile of dirty dishes, glasses and utensils piled on the back deck of the RV. I separated things out, composted the food scraps, and collected the empties (lots of empties). More hands pitched in and everything was cleaned, scrubbed and put away in good time.

Later in the afternoon, I noticed Shaun, talking on the cell phone and being very animated, strutting back and forth in the driveway and obviously "on", or "in character". When asked, Teresa confirmed that he was doing a live interview with a Portland radio station about the next day's arrival of the RV and the Eco-Trekker crew in PDX.

Continued...