Throttle

So after about 4 hours of rummaging around the house for parts, looking through boxes and boxes of just about every piece of hardware that I have ever taken apart, and a trip to Radio Shack, my throttle is done. It cost me a whopping total of $3.15 for the 5K Ohm Potentiometer, and a lot of mess from my searching.

So here is what this thing is made of:

An electrical light box and a VCR Head. Yes, a long time ago I took apart a broken VCR I had found at the dump to see how it works, and I kept the moving parts because I thought they were cool. Well, now they have use!

The VCR head fits perfectly on the potentiometer, and I have a small holder that I plan on permanently mount to the head and the potentiometer, but I will get to that when I install it. The throttle cable on the Civic connects to a wheel, so I am using this head to mimic the wheel. I am also going to add a spring mechanism to force the wheel back to its original point so when one lets off the gas, the car slows down.

OK, lets talk about another thing that has my friends and family asking questions about. The budget for this thing. Well, I have some dough in the bank, and hope its left after next semester's book supplies, but so far my main source of cash has been a bucket in the living room. I have taken a large bucket and labeled it with "Electric Car Money" and told everyone to shove their coins in it, because face it, you come home with coins and never use them. Within about 15 mins, this bucket was half full. I counted it last weekend, and stopped counting at $82, and I have added much more since then from cleaning out the cars, bedroom hidey holes and other places around the house where coins collect.