Ben Nelson's Electro-Metro Build thread

[bennelson]

I saw something a while back I thought was pretty cool.

In a friend's EV, his odometer only showed the EV miles! (about 800 or so right then)

Since I am planning on trying to eventually mount some nice looking meters, maybe it was time to take the dashboard apart. (Especially since there isn't even a controller in my car right now!)

I yanked out the instrument panel and yanked out the speedometer.


Note to self - the car had this many miles on it.




It looks like I should be able to pop out both the gas meter and the temperature meter and replace them with volt meter and ammeter or some other useful instrumentation.

[Intrigued]

Neat! I used to reset new odometers to match old ones that had messed up, back when I worked for the GM dealership. We had to be careful to match numbers, and certify correctness, to avoid problems with any future sales of the cars, since they all were less than 10 (or however many it was) years old.

If it isn't back in the car yet, you ought to figure out how many EV miles you already have on it, and reset the odometer to that. Just for the neatness factor and all...

[bennelson]

I really didn't do a good job at all tracking my EV miles so far. It would have been a lot easier if I had a trip odometer.

That's one reason I thought it would be cool to reset the odometer. It would always be showing me all my EV miles!

[lectruck]

Didn't the original craigslist add have a 140,000 miles or was that just a rough estimate? Was in on your original reciept?

[bennelson]

Metro has 51+ OFFICIAL EV MILES on it!

[nubie]

Originally Posted by bennelson

Metro has 51+ OFFICIAL EV MILES on it!

Watch out, it looks like you are out of gas, and overheating


Just kidding. How long did it take you to put that on? One trip?

[bennelson]

Actually, all the indications are that the car is using NO GAS and it's a HOT car!

I have jokingly talked about rigging up those gauges to potentiometers to "dial-in" whatever I want on them. Otherwise it might be possible to connect them to something else. For example, have the gas gauge connected to a volt-meter so that the gas gauge shows the relative capacity of the battery pack.

I also measured the frame around the two side gauges, and they are just a little bit too small to remove them and replace with standard 2" volt and amp meters.

[bennelson]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2P0VfW3me2Y

[Christopher Jordan]

Originally Posted by bennelson

Metro has 51+ OFFICIAL EV MILES on it!

Congrats Ben! My City-el has a much easier to read bicycle speedometer. When I checked 'distance' it fad a disappointing 48 miles. I went about 5 miles and back. When home I checked again- 48 miles.

Had to measure distances, days used, multiplied for the time I owned it. Wish I had your patience! I am sure your temperature gauge would have been very accurate if measuring my forehead!

[Christopher Jordan]

Originally Posted by Christopher Jordan

' it fad a disappointing

oops! had Had HAD!!!