Today was the first day on the freeway with the new transmission. Other than watching my amperage, I didn't have any issues and the car drove just fine.
Many thanks to all the people who have offered their support during this long wait to get a working transmission. I'm happy to see all the other 914 EVs out there.
On Friday I'll be re-aligning the front end for better steering and replacing the brake cylinder. I have some machined BMW 320i calipers coming in a few weeks to upgrade the stopping power. I'm also thinking about replacing all the rear bulbs with LED lights to save on 12V current. I might possibly purchase a 12V 20Amp heater for the cockpit, but I don't want to stress out the DC-DC converter too much and a 300 weight polar fleece jacket seems to work fine.
The hair dryers do very well in defrosting/defogging the front windshield. The only thing I forgot to do initially was to open the windshield vents by moving the fan lever halfway to the right. Otherwise, the hot air from the hair-dryers doesn't make it up to the windshield (oops).
I might splurge over the next year and purchase an EVision system from Metric Mind to really get a grip on the battery state of charge, but the installed PakTrakr might do just fine. I need to be careful of "feature creep when installing a bunch of new toys on the EV.
I'm in the process of figuring out if there are any tax breaks at the federal and state level for the car. I also still have two leftover transmissions sitting in the garage that I'm trying to get rid of.
I'm really happy to get the 914 on the road given rising gas prices and the economy tanking at the same time. 2008 will prove to be a very interesting year. Best wishes to all.
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3 comments:
When you get it all settled in, let us know how the performance is ... range & speed, etc.
/roger
I did some calculations a while back on whether it was worth it to install LED stop/tail/turn lights. Here's the complete post:
http://t3ev.blogspot.com/2006/10/vw-type-3-stop-tail-and-turn-signal.html
Those were using the 3W Luxeon bulbs from here:
http://superbrightleds.com/specs/115x-xLX3.htm
Admittedly, the Fastback has a slightly different set of lights than the 914, but I found that the only ones that really made sense where the running/parking lights (because they're on a lot) and the brake lights (because the fast response is a safety feature).
Still, judging by your car, I suspect that you're like me and enjoy tweaking things even if the results can't be justified by cost alone :).
On that note, let me recommend putting in a pair of the Hella H4 7" inserts for your headlights. A nice sharp cutoff and focused beam.
One more thing: if you're thinking about a 12V heater, it might be worth considering a butt warmer, er, seat heater that heats you instead of the air.
I'm using a pair of $20 Target ceramic space heaters, but the Type 3 has a nice mounting location for them that the 914 doesn't have.
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