When last you left your weary band of AustinEV electric vehicle nuts they were working to do a live motor swap at the Austin Maker Faire. Mark's MR2 had developed a problem with his motor on the way to the Faire on Friday and the decision was made to go ahead and swap out his Kostov with the Advanced DC 9" from Aaron's Kharman Ghia (which is currently being rebuilt).

All went well on day one and the motor/transmission "stack" was resting behind the car awaiting the crew's return on day two of the Austin Maker Faire.

And... I am pleased to report that everything went smoothly. Mark and Christopher got the motor and transmission back in place with little trouble. The half shafts were put back in, the tires were reattached, the controller plate was reassembled and everything was wired up. Good to go.

All the bystanders were cleared back as Mark got in the car with it still on jack stands to make sure the motor would spin up. He turned on the key, heard the reassuring clicks of the pack contactors activating and gingerly stepped on the accelerator.

The motor spun up just fine. Then Mark engaged the transmission and the wheels spun in the correct direction [grin]. All was well!

The jack stands were removed and the car was put back down on the ground to await the end of the show. Chris hooked up his PFC50 charger to the MR2 to give it a nice long drink and we all looked around to see if we could help out with any of the other fun that was going on around us.

The PHEV conversion behind us was well on its way to completion. The person who was installing Mark's Etek motor into his motorcycle was finishing up his work. And Erik Bigelow, Rob Hirschfeld, Gary Krysztopik, Jerry Asher, Tanda Rasco, Cara Choate and several other AustinEV and ACEAA members were busy educating future EV owners [grin] about how the systems work. All in all, a very successful weekend in the alternative vehicles area.

Once the show was over, and after a brief scare while we identified that the controller's communication cable had come out of its socket... Mark was able to take the MR2 out into the area that had been being used as the trebuchet (yes, I said trebuchet - did I mention that I loved! the Maker Fair?) firing range and give it a bit of a test drive. While things were a bit loose due to the Advanced DC motor being a bit shorter than the Kostov, all went well. He was able to drive it home from there without any problem.

The PHEV crew and a bunch of the AustinEV guys got together and put a cap on the weekend with dinner at Chuy's. Good people. Good EV/PHEV discussion.

Links:

Rob's posts on the event with some pictures (in particular his editor's choice ribbon!)

Some snapshots from John Penry