As I seem to like to complain about lately, work at the office has been consuming nearly all of my time for the past few months. Given that, I haven’t really had much time to devote to the truck, so it’s been sitting in my driveway for quite a while now. In the past few days some of that’s beginning to change.

First, I’ve finally sold off the remainder of the Saft BB600 batteries that I bought a few months ago when I was hoping they’d be a good power source for the truck. As a bit of background, “BB600″ is a military designation for a flooded 36Ah nickel-cadmium cell, and there are 3 manufacturers that I know of who offer a conforming product. I don’t know much about the GE cells, but the ones from Marathon are reported to produce enormous current, in excess of 2000A. The cells I bought were made by Saft, and as it turns out, aren’t good for much more than 1000A. (They’re still awesome batteries; the specification only calls for around 780A). So although they seem to be well-made cells that substantially over-deliver on both capacity and current, I had to let them go. All 1600lbs or so. Most of that (1300lbs) was in a single shipment I hauled to a freight terminal in a sagging Chevy Silverado late last week.

With those batteries out of the way, I was able to make room to move the truck into the garage, finally. With the advantage of air conditioning in the garage making it much easier to casually tinker from time to time, I’ve managed to start with a few minor disassembly details. I’ve removed a door this evening; the other door, bench seat, and hood will follow this weekend after Saturday’s AustinEV meeting.

I’ll soon be buying an engine crane to donate to AustinEV; this will probably be happening tomorrow so I can start thinking about removing the engine and fuel components.

Well, from the perspective of the truck, the project has officially begun.

Of course, this feels somewhat strange to say given that I’ve been preparing for this for months now, and I’ve been thinking about it for years. To say that it’s not turning out like I’d always imagined it is an understatement, but makes some sense considering that I’ve never really had a single clear vision about it. I’ve had several, all different. :o)

At the moment, the truck sits in my driveway, the bed having been removed this past weekend. Many thanks to Aaron Choate, who helped with the heavy lifting. At the moment my neighbors are probably not so pleased with the half-bodied pickup truck sitting out for everyone to see, and the bed isn’t helping raise property values either, leaning against the side of my house. Hopefully soon I’ll have the garage cleaned out so I can move the truck inside to start working on it, and given that getting the bed into the back yard is looking nearly impossible without a Skycrane, I’ll be getting a tarp to try to make it less obvious .