Taking inventory and making the project way easier.

I made a major breakthrough in thinking this week that will really move the project along, at the cost of another compromise. I was going to disassemble the truck and put all of the parts onto a 2-wheel drive S10 chassis I still have from my earlier EV project. The existing S10 you see here is built upon a 4x4 chassis and is not optimum for the project. However, after a little inspection of the existing EV chassis, I have determined that it really is in decent shape. Also, this EV reportedly had a 30-mile range. I was only hoping for 20+ miles, so 30 would be fantastic. I don't know if the chassis swap would net me more than a few percent in increased efficiency so it's probably not worth the effort. I had estimated 2 full days for the chassis swap, in reality I probably saved like 2 months of work! So that just got way easier.

I'll show you around the truck as is:

This is the interior. Spartan. Just needs a little cleaning up and refurbishing. Has manual crank windows, just like I like. Rubber floor mat instead of carpeting. I can always make it fancier later.
Here's underhood. This is all the electrical gizmos where the gas motor, or ICE (internal combustion engine, in EV'er lingo) used to be. The big white panel is the cover for 4 batteries that are where the radiator used to be. Don't need a radiator now.

The main item you see here, the finned box on the lower left, is called the controller. The controller sends the appropriate amount of power from the battery pack to the motor, depending upon throttle position. Right now this big brown component panel is above the motor.

Kind of tough to see, but the gray thing with the cooling holes in it is the electric motor itself. It occupies roughly the same space the ICE did. I want to make it possible to see it easier. It's not going to be cool to tell someone this is an electric car, and then tell them they can't see the electric motor because there's other stuff in the way.

The bed of the truck lifts up like so. But not for unloading cargo.

Under the bed are batteries. Loads and loads of batteries. I took the plastic covers off the racks to show you all these. These battery racks are located low in the chassis to help keep the center of gravity low. This keeps the vehicle from being unstable, especially in turns. The pink material is insulating foam board. Batteries lose a great deal of power as they get cold, like in the winter. Yes, they are all dead. I not only have to replace them, I will be adding 4 more. The truck now has 20 6-volt batteries for 120 volts. I'm going to 24 6-volters for 144 volts. More power and operating range.

Yes, there is body work to do. I know it looks bad, but I can fix this. I want to repaint the truck a bold green, because it's green. Nothing makes a vehicle look like a million bucks more than new paint. I humbly estimate one month to do the bodywork and paint.

All right, even though I didn't really do anything this week, I feel like I made a lot of progress just by doing some planning. Proper planning prevents poor performance.
And I suppose the project has now changed from the exciting building something to the relatively unambitious just-refurbishing-a-done-product.

So if you're scoring at home:

1. It will not be a vintage vehicle EV.

2. I will not really be building anything new.

3. I will not be optimizing every aspect of the vehicle for absolute best performance.

What we will have, is a functioning EV in a relatively short time. Hopefully. After all, we want to get to the motorcycle EV, the dragster EV, and the custom built roadster EV, don't we?