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Project Updates 12/1/2020

A project log for All-Electric Honda Insight

The 1st Gen Insight was perfect. Now it's perfecter.

adam-curtisAdam Curtis 12/03/2020 at 23:510 Comments

As winter settles into New England, a home-built electric car is going to need a heated garage. But that's not happening, so a battery heating system will have to do! I have a liquid heater from a smart car I bought from EV West along with the coolant pump from that same car. I will use these for now to keep the batteries toasty, and in the spring I will re-route the coolant system so that it can switch between cooling and heating the batteries depending on the weather. 

The DC/DC converter is in prototype phase 3 now and will probably stay this way for the life of the car. I missed a few details like the various heights of things, but I think that fuse should work even though it's tilted over...

I updated the throttle cable for a final set of tests before machining the parts from a billet of aluminum. I ended up removing the cable housing and cable from the original throttle and attaching a lighter weight cable and cable housing to the original piece that clips into the fire-wall. I made a hole through an M8 for adjustability (essentially identical to the stock setup, but at the exact right length for my throttle position and with a more flexible cable to accommodate the tighter radius of my throttle pulley, which is on a 320 degree potentiometer. I may upgrade to a potentiometer with a smaller range, something like what you find in the Curtis pot boxes (no relation). 

I just got some old wheel covers from a fellow Insight owner, but I haven't had a chance to get a picture with those mounted yet. So here is the best glamour shot I have to date. 

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