Power Windows

Since my driver's window stop working, I decided to go all in and see what the damage was. Ever since I owned the car the drivers windows was the only one that would work from the control panel on the door, the passenger windows only worked on the individual doors.

It didn't take me long to rip off the fender, side trim and finally peel back the insulation and inspect the 25 pin connector. Four wires were completely cut off and another 8 had severe cuts in them.

After inspecting the connector, I called up Honda looking for a replacement and they wanted $500 for a whole new cable! After an hour of trying to remove the pins on the broken connector I said forget this, went down to Radio Shack and pick up 25 bullet connections. After that, I spent over 3 hours cutting cables, stripping wiring, crimping, soldering and testing.

Now all my windows work from the main control panel! It has been my largest pain, which is now cured!

I have also had significant progress on my heater setup, which I will post about once I get some more time to case it up.

Electric Conversion From Gas To Electric Completed

We have just completed our conversion from gas to electric, two weeks ago the Fiero passed it's safety test with no problems. We had the car licensed and plated the following week. We have had a few road tests, trying to find the actual range per charge. We are averaging about 40-50 km's (24.8-31.7 miles) per charge with a charging cost that has averaged about $0.67 and taking about 3 hours to charge from a standard 115 volt ac plug rated at 15 amps. The top speed averages about 80 km per hour (49.71 miles) The range and speed performance is not bad for used UPS (uninterrupted power supply) batteries from a computer back up system. We hope in the near future to purchase lithium batteries which will most definitely increase the range to about 140 km (87 miles), improve the top speed to about 100 km per hour and have a battery life between 5 and 10 years.

3K EV Miles!

Last week I cleared the 3,000 EV mile mark! (1600 miles on this pack) It's been great driving gas free, but recently I have found a few annoyances that need to be worked on.

First, I still don't have my heater installed. The mornings have been getting colder (41F this morning) so it's time I got around to install it. Preheating the EV with the ceramic heater does work great, though. But my biggest pain has been the wire harness on the door. It's 14 years old and since I got the car I haven't been able to control any passenger windows from it, but this week it decided to stop doing the drivers window too. Not cool. So this weekend I am going to take off my fender and replace the wire harness. Well, more like repair it. It has been driving me crazy not being able to open my window for some fresh air, or to open the parking gate.

If repairing this harness does indeed fix all my window issues, I will then look into replacing my dead door lock. After I get heat installed, of course.