First Voyage Home

The bulk of the work is now done on the car. I can’t wait to have my weekends back to myself!

Saturday morning I went up to the shop to work on the heater. I had everything installed and hooked up but it wasn’t making any heat. I suspected it was a wiring issue.

I got up to the shop about 9am and got to work. First I tried switching the hot line and the neutral lines in the junction box. This did not fix it. I switched them back and scratched my head a little bit. I decided to test the rocker switch and see how it worked. I disconnected the switch, connected the hotlines together with another piece of wire, and plugged the car in. The heater almost immediately got hot! I played with the rocker switch a little more and got it working. There are 3 prongs on the back of the switch, I had my connections wrong. I connected everything back up using the rocker switch and it all worked great!

I left the car charging for a bit and went home. A couple hours later I returned with my brother so we could make the first 8.6 mile drive from the shop to my house. He followed me in his car as we took off down the road. I was very impressed at how the car performed on the way home. There are two very flat stretches of road we drove on and on both of them I got the car up to 54mph! I was thinking 45 or maybe 50, tops. I was pretty happy to get it up to 54mph, the speed limit is 55mph so it works out quite well.

The car made the journey home just fine – I even had some battery to spare. It conquered all the hills just fine and kept with the speed limit the whole way. I couldn’t be happier!