We finally finished up installing the Masterflux compressor package in the Saturn project on Sunday and took it to an AC technician to get things checked out and the system charged. Long story short... Brian is now driving around in an air conditioned EV. Yay!

Brian's car is 144V which is on the low end of the range for the controller for this unit. We were pleasantly surprised that the four of us were able to drive home in the car without breaking a sweat on a "warm" central Texas day (102 F). The car doesn't currently have a low-E film on it either which would help a great deal.

Oops. Looks like life got away from me a bit and I forgot to keep up with the writing. Since I have a few minutes, I will try to catch up on the status of things a bit.

The Saturn is doing well. We essentially delivered it a few weeks ago and it is running really well. Brian wanted very badly to participate in the IBM car show so I made a push to get cleaned up and running for that. There are a couple of things that remain, but they aren't essential for operation or safety so they can wait. By coincidence KVUE wanted to talk to an EV owner that day as well, so Brian got to keep his EV hat on and made it into the evening news too. You can watch it here if you want:

The springs are done. The springs are done. All hail, the springs are done.

Now we are on to finishing up the design for the mount for the AC compressor and getting that fabricated. We will be using this to work out the process for getting these custom parts made quickly and at a reasonable price so that we can concentrate on designing and installing the components in the cars.

Chris got right down to installing the front springs yesterday. The first one went fine with the tools that we already had in the shop, but the second proved to be a bit tougher. After some issues finding the right tools, they are ready to reinstall. Here are some pics.

This sucker is a life saver. It seems to be one of the few things that Chris has picked up from Harbor Freight that actually worked out... It is a Strut Spring Compressor and you can compare it to the more often sighted macpherson strut tool. It is simply beefier and holds the spring more securely and it compresses the spring from one point so the operation goes much more smoothly. Something you value when you are trying to remove a high tension part from your car without getting yourself killed...

Yay! We have started to receive the last remaining pieces for the Saturn project. These ended up having a much longer lead time than we had expected when we were scheduling the project. So, we had to move on with the design on the Mazda 3 while we waited for them to arrive. Now we can get on with buttoning up the last details on the Saturn and get it out to the client.

The AC compressor for the Saturn project arrived last week. It is a Masterflux Sierra compressor. We like how small these guys are and hope that we will be able to use them on our builds into the future. I will keep taking notes and posting our impressions here as we get it installed.