The good news is that I've been making far more progress on the car than this website.
My goal is to take the car on a controlled test drive before my birthday, April 25th. Before I test drive it, there are a few things I absolutely need to get working. Brakes are obviously the most important part.
Rebuilt Rear Brake
I rebuilt the rear brake calipers and replaced the brake rotors. The old brakes had been worn down past the pads and there were deep groves in the rotors. Now I just need to add brake fluid and bleed the system.
Current Sensor
I added a 500Amp current sensor on the motor loop so I can monitor the motor current. This isn't strictly nescesary but since I happened to have a suitable sensor....
Main breaker
The main breaker is far more important. As previously mentioned, Curtis motor controllers have been known to fail on! If that happens I have a main contactor I can open, if that were to fail then the breaker is the last fail safe. I'll need to rig some kind of cable so I can open it from the driver seat.
Fuse Box
I bought a new fuse block on eBay. It came from a 1984 Datsun 300zx. It even fits in the original fuse box location. The original fuse block uses the problematic German fuses, this one uses regular blade type. It also has far more circuits allowing me to split up the Fiats circuits on individual fuses and add my own circuitry for battery management system etc.
Tail Lights Working!
I hooked up the DCDC converter to 110AC and the car powered up without any smoke or fireworks!
Head Lights
Even the headlights work. The only thing not quite working is the indicator lights. I'll need to debug that some day.
