Just got back from a long day of putting stuff back together on Nick Viera’s converted Jeep Cherokee and was rewarded finally by getting to ride in it for the first time since he’d installed the new 1000-amp controller. The difference between that and his old 600-amp setup is enormous. As for the transmission swap that prompted these recent efforts, the new one is far less noisy and though we will ultimately know only when we have some hard data (watt-hours per mile, etc) it did seem to coast longer and have a little more power on tap than before the swap, he says. For me, the ride alone made the day worth it.

What I should consider a bonus are the small lessons that I would do well to pay attention to, as I plan my own conversion. The first of these lessons is design for maintenance. It takes longer, and in some respects requires some skill in predicting how certain design choices can create a nightmare later on. But the effort bears much fruit, as exemplified by something pretty unremarkable — nuts. Putting together battery racks and re-mounting equipment, the process was frequently slowed by dropping nuts and washers on the floor, which often needed to be held underneath while a bolt was inserted from the top. In nearly all of these cases, the nut could have been welded on underneath, making the entire operation faster and doable entirely from above with only one tool. Another example would be standardization of fasteners — try to have as few different fastener sizes as possible. Inside the Jeep there are about as many different sizes as their are bolts. Some of this is unavoidable, but the more standardization you have, the less time you have to spend remembering what bolt goes where.

The second lesson is the value of ziplock bags. When you disassemble something, place all its fasteners in a bag, label it, and file it. Failure to do this cost us time and money as some bolts we couldn’t find had to be replaced.

Note that none of this discussion is intended to malign Nick’s vehicle or his skills. On the whole the Cherokee is an impressive achievement, most notably since Nick began the project while still in high school (he is now about to begin his freshman year in college). Also, although Nick deserves credit for most of the design of the vehicle, Mark Farver and I did help with the construction of the battery racks, motor mounts, etc — so if some things aren’t quite what they could be, we can’t pretend we weren’t involved.