Go an e-mail last night from my new EV Buddy Tom G.
He said he would be going this morning over to a salvage yard to dismantle some forklifts.
He is in the salvage business (computers) and his friend runs that salvage yard.
I met him over there this morning. I was suprised how busy the salvage yard was. Apparently since people are strapped for cash, they bring in scrap metal to the salvage yard. The place was hopping.
I walked into the back where I found Tom hip-deep in a pile of forklifts. There really were a LOT of forklifts there. Tom was working on removing a 12" diameter monster of a DC drive motor. There are two more of the same forklift there, meaning two more of those huge motors are available. Would be great for an electric pickup truck!
I worked on stripping off some cabling, fuses, and a voltmeter off one of the smaller fork trucks.
Here is the pile of loot I got.
Yes! I found an EV-1 at the junkyard! Too bad it was a GE EV-1 and not a GM EV-1!
I got enough assorted 1 gauge cable to wire up the four batteries in the trunk. That gets me 48 volts, which is the minimum I need to run the Curtis 48-72V controller.
I also got a big handful of some screwdown cable terminals from Tom which can be used for 4 gauge down to triple-0.
I used the nice pre-made and shrink wrapped terminals on the 1 gauge cable from the forklifts on one end of the battery, and the cut the cable to length and attached a screw-down terminal and hooked it to the next battery. That way, I was able to make two battery cables from each forklift cable, and only had to attach half as many terminals.
I continued to try to match my new junkyard transmission to the one originally from the Metro. I yanked off the throw out bearing, transfered the attachment bracket, and chopped out the inside fork which pushes the throw-out bearing.
I am going over to Hot Rod Jim's tomorrow morning to use his plasma cutter to add an access port to the new transmission. I hope he can also pull out the one bolt that snapped off in the transmission. Otherwise, I will only be able to use two bolts instead of three to attach to the bracket that goes to the tranny mount.
Another cool thing I found at the junkyard is a forklift control stick with two momentary buttons on it. It should make a perfect stick-shift for my S10. I plan to eventually rig it up with one button being and engine kill button, and the other activating the starter motor.
Feels like I am actually making progress on this project! Yeah!
I also picked up a Schumacher SC-1200 from Wal-Mart. That "smart-charger" has a gel cell setting on it. I tested it out, but it does output 14.5 volts when on the end of the charge.
I will have to check with the EVDL to see what they have to say about it.