On the Road Again

It's been over a month since I last updated this project, and what a month it's been! After receiving the car with mechanical, chassis, and body restoration complete, I had roughly three weeks to finish the conversion, wiring, interior, and trim. It was a full time effort to get it all done in time for EVCCON, so I confess that I failed to document what went on, and it was a lot. But I'm very pleased with the finished product!

Photo courtesy of Tim Catellier

My father flew in from North Carolina to attend the conference with me this year and I had every good intention of leaving Austin on Tuesday so we could have a relaxed trip up to Cape Girardeau. I discovered on Monday, though, that air cooling wouldn't do for the Soliton1 controller as it was installed directly in line with the motor's hot exhaust air stream, so Dad and I spent most of Tuesday installing a liquid cooling system. That meant a mad dash of 800 miles in one day on Wednesday. We loaded the evTD onto the U-Haul trailer and set out in the wee hours of the morning.

Barely an hour up the road, a tire blew out on the trailer! We pulled into a rest stop just south of Salado, TX and waited two hours for a service truck to bring a replacement tire up from Austin, but U-Haul came through and put us on the road again. The rest of the trip was uneventful and it was great having Dad share the driving load since I'd had precious little sleep the week before. I drove the last shift into Cape Girardeau and ran through a pounding thunderstorm. We arrived at Jack Rickard's EVTV shop at around 8:30 with a half inch of rainwater standing on the floor of the evTD. A bunch of guys pitched in to wheel it off the trailer...

 ... and find me a mop so I could swab the decks!






Happily, the conference was held at the Show Me Center, and that allowed room for the cars to be displayed inside. I parked next to another classic replica, the SunJag, and the room was filled with forty or so great looking conversions. 

 Several folks have commented that the build quality on this year's cars was up a notch from last year, and I was proud to count my evTD among them.