Some really cool news today on the Plug-in Hybrid-Electric Vehicle (PHEV) front. I mentioned before that the fortuitously-named mayor of Austin Will Wynn has taken the city of Austin to the forefront of energy-efficient personal transportation advocacy in initiating his campaign to gather support in the form of intent-to-buy pledges or “soft orders” for the manufacture of plug-in hybrid vehicles. We first heard about this plan at the 4th EAA chapters conference which we hosted here in Austin in April 2005. Months later in August it was announced to the general public.

Today that plan has gained traction on a large scale, with several cities joining in. The campaign, as of today, has officially gone national.
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My apologies for the lack of new posts for the past few days, as I’ve been working on software upgrades for the website. Those upgrades are now complete, though due to a change in how the image gallery software organizes its files, many image links in the weblog are now broken. I’ll be fixing them in the next day or two.

Some additional layout changes are planned, but at least the major upheaval has ended so I can resume posting to the site. Stay tuned…

As you may have noticed, recently I’ve begun splitting my longer posts, placing the first paragraph or two on the front page, and continuing the rest with a link to the post’s individual page.

Some may find this annoying, but I’ve made the change to benefit folks who don’t read this website often (and since I only usually post every couple days, that’s probably almost everyone), allowing a quick glance down the page to check for any new headlines besides the one at the top. Hopefully it’ be easy to tell if you’ve only missed the latest post, or the last three or five, without too much scrolling.

Sometimes (when it strikes me to contemplate the obvious) I find it intriguing how our actions and constructive creativity can generate value out of nothing — how a manufactured object, shaped by the human hand or by machines of human design, achieves a value to us which is higher than that of the raw material of which it is made. This enhanced value comes not from additional substance, but merely from the object’s crafted form.

Unless of course the object happens to be a New Venture Gear NV1500 5-speed transmission from a late model GM S-10 derivative.

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Sometimes you have those days when it takes you forever to accomplish something so uninteresting that you have a hard time explaining where all the time went. Yesterday would be one of those days. Though I always end up getting less done than I plan for, yesterday was actually a really productive day. It’s just that the result isn’t much to write about.

But, you know, read on anyway. (Updated, 01/17)

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Recently I’ve had the pleasure of helping motor rebuilding expert Jim Husted of Hi-Torque Electric escape the dungeon of free web hosting, lending a hand to haul the furniture and do a little decorating for his move to a real web host. And I couldn’t be happier or more honored to do it.

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Sometimes it’s helpful to take a step back, stop obliviously patting yourself on the back and take a look at what you’re really doing and how it compares to what other folks are doing. Helps keep you from getting a swelled head unless you really deserve it.

I like to think of what I’m doing as building a sort of hotrod pickup truck. Or as first suggested back in 1998 by the GhiaMonster’s Steve Marks, a “wattrod”. Although a lot of the techniques involved are unique to a high-performance vehicle with an electric powerplant, most of the real work is typical hotrod stuff. Identify the stock parts designed for fabrication economy and driver comfort, which will fail under extreme stress, and replace them with stronger and more expensive parts that won’t. As much as I’d like to think I’m doing something unique, the reality is that most of this is stuff people have been doing for decades.

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Another productive Saturday afternoon. We managed to get the heater core out, as shown in the Disassembly gallery starting on page 4. Unfortunately, as it turned out there was indeed a leak in the core as I’d suspected when running the heater. The reddish GM Dexcool had congealed into a nasty syrupy glop in the bottom of the vent unit, which I’ll have to clean. Fortunately it looks like the heat/vent module disassembles further, so with some luck I can get it all out.

(Read on …)

Suffice it to say at the moment I’m thrilled beyond reason.

The news for today is so insanely great, I must make an effort towards prudent restraint lest I break my rule about profanity. Fortunately for my more sensitive readers, the proper English spelling is unclear for most of what I’d like to express, comprising as it does this sonic goulash of primal Tim Allen grunting spiced with the garnish of an occasional “hot damn”. The big guy is here, and is now safely parked in the back of my garage thanks to some help from Mark Farver, and so one huge item now gets marked off the punchlist.

Motor. Done.

Pictures of the new arrival are in the Motor gallery, page 2.

Also, a couple shots of the current state of the dash, um … sans-dash, are in the Disassembly gallery, page 4.

As is typical for a low-traffic site such as this one, comments don’t get posted very often. Still, for some reason I seem to get quite a bit of comment spam from time to time, and have had to enable moderation of comments in order to prevent it from appearing.

Because of this, comments left here unfortunately won’t appear right away. I try to check for comments at least once a day, but sometimes the notification email slips past for a while. Please forgive the delay in getting your comments posted.

Also, while I’m on the subject. No matter how worthwhile the comment, it will be deleted if it contains language not suitable for all ages.