Between the less-than-successful but still enjoyable EAA conference near Chicago last year, the release of Who Killed the Electric Car (which AustinEV supported with a car show at a theater in Austin), another great showing at the Renewable Energy Roundup, and most recently our successful and encouraging showing at the Sustainable Shopper’s Ball in south Austin, 2006 wasn’t exactly a slow year for EVs, AustinEV or EAA. It has however, been a very slow year for the Ohmbre project, but this is fortunately beginning to change now.

Not that nothing’s been done to the truck since last time I posted. A few months ago I removed the entire cab, to get better access to the frame for the purpose of eventually mounting the motor and modifying the floor of the cab to go around it. It was a pretty awkward operation, during which the cab was lifted at the front with the engine hoist, and at the rear (much lighter) by hand. The chassis was then rolled away underneath, and I built a rolling cart to support the cab without taking up excessive floor space in the garage.

Recently, I’ve been working on the rear of the frame, preparing it for the modification I’ll be doing to the suspension. I’ll have to cut away a section of the frame on both sides and reshape it; to do this I need to get stuff out of the way. First this means to remove the rear axle. I needed to support the rear of the frame so I built legs and bolted them on, adding some bracing to keep the frame from bending or twisting. I then disconnected the brake line going to the axle, and pulled the bolts to detach the leaf springs.

Now I have a mess I need to dispose of, in the form of perfectly functional but basically worthless springs, shocks, and a differential. I’ll put them on Craigslist, but I’m doubting I’ll get any takers, even for free.

Pictures of the cab and axle removal start at the end of page 5 of the Disassembly section.