The guard on my car needs a fix after a bump – oops – a simple job one would expect, but shopping around for a good panel beater is difficult as most don’t want to guarantee their workmanship on anything that could bring on the slightest hint of rust. I have a spare guard but it has spot rust in a corner. The little dent can be hammered out and re-sprayed. A recommended panel beater turned out to be indolent and over six weeks promised the world and offered nothing, except personal comments about my looks, boobs, etc. I’m lucky I guess; a friend left his EV with a panel beater recently who drove it around happily, not caring for the ‘fuel empty’ alert and in so doing, wrecking a couple of the batteries.
It’s a bit of a battle in a bloke’s world – whaddya do? Anyway, at least Nathan is good at cutting holes and has done an excellent job on the car – he knows what’s important and takes advice on-board instead of saying ‘I know better than you’ like a lot of fellas do. As he’s said, we’ve both learned a lot in the past year.
Bodgy mounting? No, because it's mounted on the inside firewall and easily accessible.
‘Mounting my Charger’
Me being a picky, persistent and annoying person at times, (okay okay, often), I didn’t want the Zivan to be mounted somewhere awkward and intrusive. The shape of the car is restrictive but clues on where to place stuff were staring me in the face. Some time ago I said, why not mount it in the pillar? After some research and legality-checking, Nathan agreed it could be a good place so I mocked up a dummy Zivan. Always mock up components if you have space issues! The Starion pillar has a kind of natural venting which is assisted by a small fan. It’s still easy to reach the Anderson connector should I need to. Oh, and the DC-DC is mounted on the opposite pillar – neat.
Mounting Chargers & Getting Hot
No, I’m not being equine here; most folks mount their chargers at the rear of the car, near the charging port and rear battery pack. Me? Well for a Starion, hatch space was more of an issue. The Echo had the charger slotted nicely on its side behind the batteries in the rear compartment. But I’d hate to see that car in a rear-ender. Yes, a side impact where my Zivan is would be a pain (for the Zivan) but side impacts are statistically less common than rear-enders – although statistically at higher speeds when they do occur (which would be a pain for me, and kill the Zivan fer sure). Still, it seemed to be a good solution, affording space in the rear of the car.
I’ve always been concerned of heat issues and to me, chargers next to a hot batteries pack didn’t seem like a good idea. If heat is an issue for me, a solution would be to bring some airflow in via the overlying back-seat corner surround. It’s thick foam under leather. A shaft can be cut through for the mounting of an extraction fan which engages when the Zivan is on. A speaker grill could cover the hole so it looks neat. All in all, I probably won’t need to do it as the batteries are pretty robust. We’ll see.
So far from what we’re researched, Thundersky batteries can get quite hot but suffer little under confined no-ventilation-flow areas, so the Echo should have no troubles there at all. Since my car is a bit more sporty, hah, the batteries will get warm from the sheer fun for pushing in excess of 3C 
which they can take under the right circumstances.
Other Cars
Speaking of sporty, did I mention Bolwell in a past post? Last I heard, he wanted to do an electric version of this… http://www.bolwellcarcompany.com/. So far, no replies to my queries. If anyone knows what’s happened since, let me know.
Older report here, http://www.motorauthority.com/bolwell-considering-all-electric-version-of-nagari-supercar.html
It seems everyone wants to get in on the electric car act and all sorts of cars can be converted; even, perhaps, this…
Make this electric? Nah, it probably wouldn't be the same without the 'Vrooom.'
