I made some progress on the front battery box today. It's been so long since I last tackled anything on this project I had to re-learn how to tig weld....

Making room for the new cross braces. cutting and grinding always makes such a mess.

Welded Nuts in place before tacking the angle iron in place.

One battery installed.

Digital Dashboard

After pricing a set of replacement Porsche Gauges at well over $1k, I decided it was time to build a digital dashboard. I had a Raspberry PI sitting around and ordered a 7 Inch hdmi display. The Solition1 controller broadcasts its data over the Ethernet cable using UDP, and they provide an example data logging application in c. After a brief search of the Internet I settled on Qt for the GUI since it would give the greatest flexibility, with qml for the graphics and c++ backed. Now to lean Qt and for a refresher in c++. I'll try to maintain the code on Github in case anyone is interested, but its most likely messy and broken at any given point.

Raspberry Pi and HDMI Display

Modified Qt 5.6 Quick dashboard demo

First Drive

Last summer we purchased a home, and while I'm happy to no-longer be a renter the list of projects has grown considerably slowing my progress on the EV. Fortunately I can report that no trailer was required to move the Porsche across town. I borrowed the 4 Lead acid batteries from my electric motorcycle and completed the 2-mile cross town trip, at a blazing 20 mph.

Rear battery boxes

I finally purchased a cheap DC tig welding setup, and found a few minutes to start welding up a frame for the rear battery box and motor controller.

rear bumper installed

Last week I mounted the rear bumper. Today I installed the Go-pedal!

It is an accelerator pedal from a 2006 VW GTI (atleast I'm keeping it in the family). The nice thing about this pedal is that the 0-5k potentiometer built into the pedal is compatible with the Soliton 1 controller.

Seat-belts and turn signals

I'm one step closer to getting the car ready for inspection. Today I got the turn signals and brake lights working. Then I started working on the seat belt anchors. I am using a set of latches from a 944, because they were cheaply available and plug into the factory belts. I'm finding the biggest downside to starting with a salvage vehicle is finding out what is missing...

The seat is slid all the way forward in this picture, but the belt latch is easily reachable from the seat when in the proper position. I think this is nearly how the early cars were setup. Later cars have the belt attached to the seat. However, since these were modified aftermarket seats there was no place to attach the buckle. Still I'm making progress.

Fun with Fuses!

This week I am re-wiring the fuse panel in attempt to get working lights and turn signals. I am also taking the opportunity to upgrade to blade type fuses using a Hella fuse block.