Front Batteries

Friday, 25th of July
After getting back relatively early from happy hour at work.. I setup my cart with my toolbox and head down to the garage..

I tackle the of the batteries in the front.. this was tough at firs,t then I figured out "tricks".. which more or less included prying them off with a long flathead..

 Now with all the cables out of there I removed the cradle from ontop and tried to jimmy a battery out.

These puppies were not budging. they could tilt here and there, but because they had essentially all expanded, there was a bit of friction. I grabbed a phillips and stuck it into the terminals of one of the batteries and was finally able to leverage it out.. 

The remaining batteries came out much easier after the first was removed.

Does my ass look fat in these jeans?

Loading up all 8 front batteries (minus the accessory one) on that cart was a baaaaaaaaaad idea.. what happened was all the weight from above transfered to the corner posts, causing the bottom shelf to buckle up towards the middle, even bending where the wheels were.. this made steering very difficult. I got almost to the elevator before this became a problem.. so I offloaded two batteries from the top and took the cart up 3 floors to my place, grabbed a wooden dolly thing (somehow that did not make it onto the list of what was bought at harbor freight.. but it was) and came back down, loaded up two batteries on it, and pull it into the elevator and back to my place..

I unloaded all 8 batteries for fear of the cart destructing in the middle of the night, and creating noise + damage..

I "fixed" the cart by bending it a bit, and using some big clamps that I had from making my white maple frog shelving units.. I am still weary of the cart though..

301 tools

Thursday, 24th of July
"You can never have too many tools, just not enough space to store them all.." - Friend who drove me

at harbor freight I grab:
301pc Mechanic's Tool Kit
450lbs rated metal service cart with 3 shelves
a racing jack
2 paris of 3 ton jack stands
a $10 clamp on multimeter, because I left my Craftsman one in Ohio
gloves

We bring everything back and I show him the car. I even allow him to sit in the drivers seat and pretend like he's driving it.

Would I enjoy something other than cheap chinese tools? yes. what you have to realize is that this is a kit car.. everything is held up from nuts and bolts.. nothing is tapped, nothing is over torqued.. an actual person put this together in 1980.. and it's been sitting for a very long time.

We eat some sushi near by.. he leaves and I start to build the service cart.. at like 11pm.. I stop around midnight after getting most of it together (missing one bolt) without everything torqued because the ratchet is making a bit of noise and I do not want my neighbors to complain.. my poison dart frog tadpole system already leaked from this 3rd floor, down to the parking garage a few days earlier..

Sitting, Waiting

Wednesday, 23th of July
I continue to spend my evenings sitting in the driver seat, pretend I am driving, and figuring out in what steps I should take this thing apart.

Several more people ask me about it..

I convince a guy from work to help me get some tools tomorrow..

Analysis

Tuesday, Jul 22nd
The day after arrival is a day of learning. I figure out how to open up the trunk, hood, and hatch. What greeted me was a mass amount of mouse poo over all batteries and such.. Examined the body which seemed good.. the interior seems to be in good condition but it is too... 80s.. it's very "Macho" .. tan leather, brown carpet.. etc.. if I ever get to repainting and re-upholstering the car, I think I will go with "high voltage yellow" and black..

There is not much to do until I get some tools, primarily a service cart to haul the batteries out of..

and some wrenches..

Acquisition pt 3

July 21st, Monday
Arrival
I work from home this day, and get about half a days work in before the 1pm call from Pablo, the driver of the transport, lets me know he has arrived. He parks a huge 3 car long, 2 tall (for a total of 6 cars capable of being loaded) the next street over.

I check out the car, for the first time in person, and I smile.

I am unsure why I did not take any pictures of the car arriving... but I didn't..

I explain that I would like to have it dropped off a street over and into the underground parking garage.. he asks if I have a friend that can help, I state everyone is at work..
He tells me he has at least a half hour of maneuvering stuff around, as the car is non op it could on go into one spot on the bed. I basically wait for him to do this..
After removing two cars in front of mine, he proceeds a long half hour + of towing the car in different manners, up inclines etc.. the kicker was the final part, when he couldn't have the tow on it any longer, and rocks it back in forth while in the drivers seat to roll down. Immediately I help push it backwards to in front of my building, then we push forward turning to the right to go down the street.. half a block later or so we make another right to the parking garage. some grunting and then pushing the remote button to open up and letting gravity do most of the work at that point, nearly got it into my space without pushing it.. some miscommunication about what spot is mine. once it comes to a stop he pulls the e-brake and hands me the keys, I thank him with sweat trickling down my forehead and he goes on his way.

I spend the next hour adjusting the door jams so they would properly latch and lock.. as they hadn't needed to do anything like that in a very long time. the gas struts for the gull wing doors obviously do not work neither and will need replacing.

I sit in the car for the next several hours. People would come up and get a real good look at the foreign looking car, and jump back as soon as they noticed someone was sitting in it. I would usually jump out and let them know about it. but at least a half dozen people were asking about it, and that's just wihtin my apartment complex..

Acquisition pt 2

After payment was sent and received via check, I looked for a car transportation company to help me out.
DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT request quotes from a dozen websites. What each of them does is broadcast your request out to brokers, several brokers.. within 5 mins of doing this I had phone calls from guys on the east coast, when it was 11pm their time.

Several dozen emails the next day.. I finally got ideas of what the cost will be, a fairly common low price of $650.. but I came across two companies that were $500.. this was a great price given that that car is non-operational: it has been sitting for 30 years, more or less, and needs  new batteries and an accelerator cable. I setup transportation with one of the two.

Wednesday the 16th, July
Days go by after I sign the agreement and no notice of when it would come, seller was asking about it too.. so I give them a ring and they told me it was scheduled two days ago, and was sorry that his dispatcher did not communicate with me. He gave me the driver, Pablo's, cell phone number and his dispatcher's, he finally emailed me the information about pickup and delivery via email and I forward these to the seller. The seller calls Pablo who had the incorrect address, but Friday, the 18th of July, was slated as pickup.

Friday the 18th, July
Pickup happens, I know this as during "happy hour" that our org has on fridays I receive a call from Pablo stating that because the car was non-op he wanted $100 more.. I state that in the contract that I have with the broker it was noted that it was non-operation, then he tried to say that the street it was located at was hard to get to.. trying to chum up some money from me.. wasn't happening.

I receive pictures from the seller showing me where they hooked the tow up to, so I can examine that area for damage when it arrives:

Acquisition pt 1

July 9th, 2014
I purchased an electric kit car on eBay!
A Bradley GT 2, one of 50 the company produced electrically, of which one of 10 they built themselves. It is still the standard body as the Bradley GT2 but has a subframe that holds the enormous amount of batteries on, which is bolted underneath the standard VW chassis.

I had only been looking for a few days before coming across said car.

Recap:
I recently went on a hunt for an older car to convert to electric. This was actually after watching a Counting Cars on the History channel, when Roli picked up a Seabring-Vanguard CitiCar, a golf cart, street legal, ABS plastic body, electric car from the 70s. I had known about this car for a few years and searched on eBay soon after this.. through some digging I came across one, but given what it was the guy was asking too much, no bids and his auction ended, and re-listed, same price..

Soon after I look on craigslist for local stuff and came across a 1970s Opel GT with an electric motor bolted to the transmission already for only $500. I attempt to contact the guy and plan a trip to go fishing with a friend from Ohio that I moved out here to California to work at the same team in the company I am at.. We go fishing and don't catch anything,, figured, out California fishing experience sucks, caught like 2 small trout and that's it.. No communication from the guy, who said he would be returning the night before from L.A., we even stop at the city (about 2 hrs from San Jose) and eat and wait.. finally decide to head back home..
A few days later he txts me to say that he just now returned and we try to schedule something for the weekend. I let him know that because the 2hr drive, and the pictures and text about the car that I have seen thus far, I was prepared to hook up a hitch and car trailer to my buddy's Jeep Cherokee and do the sale right then and there if it looked good to me in person. He also mentions that another guy was interested and has a schedule meetup for Saturday.. great business man, isn't he? .. so I let this slide and basically let the other guy go after it..
The next week I get another txt saying the other dude's truck broke down half way to check it out, and if I was still interested to let him know to schedule something.. we schedule for July 5th. I convinced my buddy to drive out to Redwood city, about half way between SJ and SF to go to the only U-HUAL place with the hitch that will work for his car in stock by saying I will buy him the hitch, he just has to drive to get there, and maybe the car as well..
We go out to Redwood City on Independence Day to get the hitch, and given the traffic we made decent time, we get there around noon. We ask about the hitch asked if they wanted them to install it because they are booked on that, we explain we had tools (really, all I brought were pliers and vice grips sitting in the passenger seat) then upon looking at it the lady says that the bolts for it are missing.. and she would knock like $10 off, and should be easy enough as going to the O'Reilly's across the street for the bolts.. while looking it over, and going back and forth to the car parked a block away because they wouldn't let us in the parking lot, we basically decided to go for it.. I am literally holding my card in my hand when the guy txts back and tells me that his grandfather, the owner of the car, sold it without him knowing...
I let him know I was disappointed in this as I am literally holding a hitch in my hands getting ready to pay for it...
We go to another Ohioan working with us for a 4th celebration of board games..



background note:
I am against gas. I have never had my drivers license because of this fact, which actually did not come out until a few weeks after graduating high-school (2005, I was 18) when my brother showed me a torrent on Over-Unity, plans on generating more electricity than you use. For the next ~decade I conceive of my own electric motor.

I spent 3 years as a mechanic at a bicycle shop.. I am not sure if I like bikes, but I hate gas, bikes became my mode of transportation. If it were not the step-mother of a girl who worked at the bike shop, I would not have gotten a decent computer job (perl, regex, data conversion/entry) and was able to quit when the shop became way too corporate, along with many of the good people leaving..

March 2013
When I was revising my resume for some other position a year or two later, I asked in the #cycling channel on EFNet, which I frequented, if the company was any good. Fairly quickly I receive a statement from someone stating "We're hiring".. He is now my boss' boss, and I moved two others (sort of) from Ohio out here to Silicon Valley to work with me..