Over the past several months I’ve enjoyed the use of a 1986 Toyota Pickup turned prerunner (prerunners are off road Baja 500 style trucks usually 2 wheel drive, mine was a 4×4 so it was a bit unique). I nicknamed her Maybeline and took her down to Holister and San Luis Obispo where there are sand dunes. When I told my grandpa about this adventure he explained that when he was in the service as a guard (at a detention camp for WWII soldiers who had disobeyed orders) he used to drive on the same dunes with army jeeps, sounds like a blast!
Here are the details of Maybeline: She is a custom offroad style Toyota pickup, 1986 extra “extended” cab with five speeds and a manual transmission. This baja style racer is truly one of a kind and perfect for four wheeling in Hollister or cruising the sand dunes in SLO, she turns heads wherever she goes and is the real deal in terms of design and construction. She even has a hub snorkel which vents heat and keeps the rear differential dry.
Highlights include a pressure snorkel for the rear differential, body mounted brush guard bumper (louvered skid plate) integrated with engine & roll cage, front and rear King air shocks with reservoirs for sustained action, bucket racing seats with RJS racing harnesses, racing clutch and custom gearing for improved performance in the desert. Full details follow:
- Custom off road Prerunner bumper with four floodlights
- Custom louvered skid plate and push guard
- Custom rear end with two flood lights and fifth full tire mount + locks & quick access bar
- Built in farmers jack / 4×4 jack in rear
- Deaver leaf springs with racing style rear differential
- Racing clutch
- K&N racing filter
- King air shocks with built in reservoirs
- Built in engine roll cage
- Built in cab roll cage
- Great interior, working sound system + tweeters
- Fiberglass front and rear Fenders
- Fiberglass pin on hood
- RJS 3 point racing harness for passenger, 4 point for driver
- In cab and in engine roll cage
Eventually I sold Maybeline and moved on to other projects but the idea was to convert her to electric and mount solar panels on her body like armor. The solar panels were going to be provided by SunPower (which is top of the line right now in terms of efficiency) and cost ~$5,000 even with the high efficiency panels we were only expecting five miles per day worth of solar energy charge. Below are several posts from a blog we created for the project called solartruckstory. We wanted to drive the truck across the USA and maybe even down to South America and Mexico for Spring Break.
I’ve got a couple of pro skier friends in Colorado who might have done a photoshoot jumping over her or jibbing parts of the roll cage. I hadn’t seen The Long WayRound at the time but that’s what I had in mind in terms of driving into remote areas, but in our case we would have portable wind turbines to setup at night and park on the beach, charging off the land, maybe have a built in stirling engine + solar panels… we could go anywhere! On to the Solar Truck Story:
Initial thoughts, starting something big
It’s a funny thing, setting out to create something new. Even if it has been done before, even the exact same thing by someone else somewhere else… the process of creation is wonderful and stimulating, especially when it represents positive progress for humanity – environmental sustainability.
So when I met Dave at the Caltrain station one night and we hit it off as friends and entrepreneurs, the normal everyday boundaries of what “can” and “cannot” be done started to disappear. We’ve talked about a lot of great ideas including a social networking digital pet (an idea that my good friend Ben first explored with me), an iphone cooking app (because Dave loves to cook), and ultimately a solar electric truck with “off the grid” modular power units that could be like a “go anywhere” EV. Eventually a full fledged car company that would deliver innovation in it’s purest and most positive form.
In the same ways that creativity and enthusiasm flourished in the 60′s and 70′s when resources seemed unlimited and people had just reached the moon for the first time, our company would restore that feeling of limitlessness and reinvigorate creativity and fun in the transportation industry. We are Generation Y, and lately I’ve been thinking… Y the %#*$ not? But, before I go too far with this, I think it’s important to remember that even if all paper were recycled, and all plastic bottles were actually made of biodegradable sustainable corn products, our lifestyle in America and many other countries of rapid consumerism would still tarnish our environment and leave us feeling empty hearted.
‘Nuff said! Could it be done? Well, yes… And it will be. We’ll be telling the story here at Solar Truck Story and a few of our other sites around the web so check back soon ;)
EV Pioneers
Today while I was taking a walk in downtown Palo Alto, CA where I work, I caught my first glimpse of a Tesla Roadster! That’s right, it’s the little EV sportscar created by Tesla Motors funded by the creator of PayPal. At first I just thought it was just a fancy sportscar (we get a lot of those around here, one block away from Facebook… two miles from the Googleplex…) but it was so quiet, I figured it must be something special. Being near sighted, I changed my direction and approached the car as it slowly eased into a parking spot in front of a cafe. As I began to realize that it was a Tesla Roadster I started getting excited and moving in even closer to where the car had silently stopped. As soon as the driver (who dwarfed the car as he stood up to get out) was on his feet I exclaimed “is that one of those Tesla sports cars I’ve heard about”? He smiled widely and said, yeah, it’s a Tesla!
I couldn’t help myself, I immediately began questioning the man about his car. “When did you get it?” I asked. He explained that he had only owned it for two short days. “How does it drive?” I responded… We talked for several more minutes like this and then I told him that my friend and I had plans to build an electric truck. “It won’t work” he replied swiftly, it has too much drag and it’s not light enough. I was a bit disappointed to hear this viewpoint so I probed a bit deeper. I responded “it sounds like you know a thing or two about electric cars, why did you buy a Tesla if you could have just built one yourself?” The man quipped back, “I did build my own” and then pointed back to the car at his side. “So you’re Mr. Tesla!” I responded, sounding foolish no doubt as the scientist for which the Tesla company and car is named, Nikola Tesla, died in 1943.
At this point it all started to click together. The man whose car I was oogling was Martin Eberhard, the co-founder and former CEO of Tesla Motors. That helped explain why his car was gray with an orange racing stripe, a paint job that only someone with rock star status (or a death wish) could have. Remember, roads are gray and roads also have orange racing stripes… Nothing against Martin here, but driving around at speeds in excess of 120 miles per hour in a tiny lotus-inspired aluminum and carbon fiber car painted like the road just isn’t my cup of tea. It was an honor to meet Marting and I hope we can prove him wrong with our electric truck someday very soon. Below you can see a cameraphone pic I snapped of Martin’s Tesla Roadster while we were talking :)
The pick of the litter
For the past couple of weeks Dave and I have been scouring Craigslist for trucks that could work for our off road EV prototype. Initially I thought it would be cool to use a Toyota Tacoma with a ladder rack to put solar panels on and Dave was considering purchasing a brand new truck (at a discount since fuel is so expensive right now). However, three days ago we fell in love with a modified baja truck on Ebay and today we closed the deal… kind of.
Deciding to modify a truck at all has been a tough call. It seems like it makes sense, I mean they can be light and yet they have a lot of surface area for solar panels. They are useful in specific ways that cars are not, and there are plenty of people who use trucks as commuter vehicles anyway, so it really seems like a winning combination. With this new truck however, we’re bypassing the commuter option in favor of something that will help redefine what an “electric car” can be. We’re setting out to create something strong that truly performs as a truck and use it as a proof of concept, eventually touring around the US taking it through the hardest most unforgiving terrain!
If the decision to buy a truck that I’ve never actually seen, which resides seven states away, by using an online auction system with limited insurance weren’t enough of a risk we decided to make it even crazier by calling the seller up directly and having him end the auction early so we could wire cash directly and have it shipped immediately. Pray that it works we told each other….
Outside of the truck purchasing logistics we’re dealing with right now there is also the challenge of having it shipped here… We’ll deal with that when the time comes, right now it’s a toss up between flying out (risking losing my job for taking too much time off and getting stranded in Detroit… and subsequently murdered) or paying $1,500 to have it moved. The ladder is looking pretty good.
California, here she comes… right back where she started from
I would like to take a moment to personally welcome Maybeline, our brand new 1986 Toyota Tacoma 4×4, back to the Golden State where she first slipped into those sexy flared fiberglass fenders, pulled on that little black Baja rollcage and flicked on her six off-road floodlights. I’d like to, but I can’t, because Cadamie is making out with her in the hot tub right now. I guess that’s only fair – he did pay for her, after all. Besides, Maybeline likes to play rough…I know I’ll get my turn.
Maybeline came to us from a former Marine in Paw Paw, Michigan with a laundry list of trophy truck modifications, most notably King Off-Road Racing Shocks paired up with 3″ springs on chromoly A-arms in the front and Deaver leaf springs in the rear, giving her a massive 14″ of travel at each corner. She’s also got 4.88 gears in her transfer case and rear end to increase torque to her 32″ Maxxis Mudder tires. Speaking of tires, this harlot has her spare hanging way out over her rear end with a Hi-Lift jack tucked right behind it for balance. Then there’s the boring stuff, like the bulletproof 2.4L 22RE engine with headers, cam, and full exhaust, which we plan on ripping out as soon as the electric goodies arrive. Sacrilege? Indeed.
ps. the title of this post references a song from Phantom Planet… used in the OC TV series, if you haven’t heard of it (or aren’t sick of it) check it out here on YouTube.
Our first drive in Maybeline
This is it! Today we will take our modified Toyota 4×4 off road for the first time… That is, if we can find a section of “off road” near Mountain View to take it on. The video posted below pretty much covers the adventure but just in case you’re experiencing our website via text reader or don’t have the proper software to play YouTube videos I’ll give you a quick overview of what we did and how it went along with a few extra details below.
The truck just arrived yesterday (it was actually three days late). We had it shipped all the way from Paw Paw Michigan from a friend who had recently finished his tour with the Marines and wanted to have some fun, hence the purchase of this crazy bajad-out pickup. He drove it around for eight months and then decided it was time to pass it along and start acting more like a responsible adult. He actually wasn’t even the one who modified it, apparently he got it from another man in California and had it shipped out to his family’s farm in Michigan. So with it’s arrival to us night it has come full circle – California to Michigan and back.
Once we had officially purchased the truck online we became very eager to get it in our hands and we were considering a few options for shipping. Ultimately we chose to enter our information into an online shipping coordinator system which has since plagued my inbox with spammy shipping quotes… We would have liked to have done a road trip with the truck, driving it to California ourselves, but since we didn’t know what kind of shape it was in or whether it was completely street legal, or whether we could even get the time off of work, we simply decided to ship it. Shipping ended up costing us $1,500 so the grand total for the truck was $7,500 and considering all of the modifications and unique features it flaunts, it was definitely worth it!
Literally, within 24 hours of our decision to buy the truck I had coordinated the online purchase and wire transfer of funds along with the shipping plan. I had hoped that everything was taken care of but as it turned out the truck didn’t arrive on the day we were first promised and the wire transfer had to be done in two parts. Instead of showing up on time it showed up two and a half days late. This was a real bummer because I had actually an afternoon of work off to receive her. Unfortunately, the driver (who barely spoke English) kept changing his plans so when the truck was finally parked in my parking lot it was a great feeling of release to finally, finally! take her for a spin.
In the video we hop into the truck and take her to a gas station where we clean off the windows (which were filthy) and then fill her up with good old fashioned gas-o-line. For all of your future readers, this is the stuff people used to use to power their cars! It’s toxic, smelly, expensive, and very flammable… even explosive. People used to use it for all kinds of systems but realized (mostly during the 2008 olympic games in China) that if we didn’t curb our appetite for dirty fuels we would end up living in filthy cities speaking a very complicated language shlacking greasy soot out of our hair every time it rained.
So she was ready! We hopped in after the gas station and drove over to Dave’s apartment where we checked the air pressure and picked up some emergency gear (in case of breakdowns). With the tires full of air and first aid in tow we drove up to the Arastradero Preserve area just outside of town. While we couldn’t even find a dirt road to drive on, we were able to pull off on the side of one small road and romp around on a dirt pile for a while. I re-learned how to drive a stick shift and Dave learned about old fashioned four wheel drive systems and hub locking. Good times ;)
The DMV Sucks
If the journey of 1,000 miles begins with one small step… Then the journey to driving 1,000 miles begins with a long wait in line at the DMV. Apparently the DMV is on strike where we live in California and that means wasted time, unhappy citizens (of all walks of life), and wasted productivity/money.
I showed up thirty minutes before they even open the doors at the DMV because I had heard it could take a long time. I also wanted to get Maybeline street legal as soon as possible (since she already draws so much attention). I arrived at 7:24am to find myself face to face with a line of other eager automobile drivers that wrapped half way around the small building! Now, I realize that sometimes waiting is avoidable… and I’ve certainly got patience, but what a missed opportunity. The DMV could do so much better! Why don’t they just setup a “free” line and then a “paid” line, I would definitely pay $10 just to cut my wait (which ended up being 3 hours) down to 20 minutes. Not everyone can afford to take work off, and some of us make way more than $10 an hour so it’s really a shame to have no options. If the DMV just setup a VIP pass of sorts (kind of like they are doing at airports now with the “clear card” not only would people be happier, they could also afford to pay their employees more and that would reduce the number of strikes.
Well, I’ve already been ranting here but the situation was pretty terrible. My early arrival and prime spot in line went to waste because I had to get Maybeline “looked at” first to check the VIN number which meant I lost my spot and then once she was signed off on I got at the very end of the normal line again and had to wait for a number and finally get to the license plates desk. Since I also chose not to lie about how much we paid for Maybeline ($6,000) I was slapped with a huge tax of $700 just for bringing her into the state. Considering a non-baja version of Maybeline (a 1986 4×4 truck) would go for ~$2,500 that was a slap in the wallet. Well, at least now it’s done!
A solar powered truck named Maybeline
Where do I begin? She’s a 1986 Toyota 4×4 that’s beat up, rusting, noisy and smelly, and yet she’s beautiful. She’s freedom really… Her driver side door barely stays shut because here previous owner, (our friend Matt out in Michigan) backed her up into a pole while the door was open peeling her all the way back. But it doesn’t matter, she was definitely born with it (beauty) and the fiberglass fenders, built in roll cage, six KC floodlights (two in the rear for blasting police when in pursuit) are all sort of like makeup. She’s F@#$able all right, she will F@#$ you up if you don’t look out!
So I’m a really playful kind of guy, I like to meow like a kitty and run around like a cheetah, don’t ask me how I came up with Maybeline, it just happened and now Dave and everyone else is stuck with it! For a while I was tossing it around just for fun and it took some time for Dave to accept it, but with this post it’s official. I guess one of the other aspects of this project that resembles a makeover is that we’re tearing out her pride (brute force and off road mayhem) and putting in an artificial limb, an electric motor and some solar panel armor. I’m willing to bet that she comes out even more exotic and beautiful than when we began. It’s like comparing the original, Jennifer Aniston, to the more exotic and worldly (certainly environmentally friendly) replacement, Angelina Jolie.
Washed, waxed, and ready for a night on the town
We all love spending a little time now and then with girls who are, well, rough around the edges. And when Maybeline arrived, she definitely qualified as rough around the edges. But tonight is Friday night, and there is no way Cadamie and I were gonna be seen mixing it up with this Michigan farm girl without getting her polished up a bit first.
The first stop was Harv’s Car Wash for a full detail. Then we found out how much a full detail would run us, considering the oxidized paint, overspray on the glass and, well, a pretty filthy interior. Harv’s charged us $85 (we got a 15% discount for using my AAA card) for the exterior detailing, and when I got back to pick the girl up for our night out discovered that they decided to shampoo the seats and detail the interior for us as well. The paint was shiny and smooth, and the interior was nice and fresh. Maybeline sure cleans up well.
We then unveiled our updated outfit for her. We bought Maybeline two matching www.solartruckstory.com vinyl stickers from FedEx Kinko’s for $80, and carefully applied them to her curvy sides. We also bolted on her new Cali tags, and she was ready to go.
This is where you come in, kind reader, because this was her first public unveiling, and the first time you might have seen her and found your way to this site. We drove to Castro Street in Downtown Mountain View, waited (quite a while) until the spot in front of Budda Bar was empty, and parked Maybeline there for the night. We were proud to show her off wearing the stickers that hint at our ambitious goal: to turn her into a solar powered Baja truck.
Redemption in the Hollister Hills
By now you’ve seen our meager attempt at offroading in the Bay Area. It’s difficult to look cool when the biggest mountain open to 4x4s is a pile of dirt on the side of the road. I also found out that I didn’t actually know absolutely everything about cars and trucks, and had to have Country Boy Cadamie show me how to lock up them there hubs when we got in the dirt for the first time. Of course now that I know that piece of information, I once again know everything about cars and trucks.
Today we had the perfect opportunity to redeem ourselves, though, when we took Maybeline down to the Hollister Hills State Vehicular Recreation Area to put her through her paces. We gassed up in Mountain View around 11 am and hopped on 85 South to 101 South for the hour-long trip. The truck did surprisingly well on the highway, considering the 4.88 gears and mudder tires, and we got plenty of envious looks along the way.
Hollister Hills SVRA consists of two separate properties in the Gabilan Mountains near Hollister, California with elevation changes from 660 feet to 2425 feet. The Upper Ranch is an 800-acre area with 24 miles of trails for offroad driving, though it is occasionally closed for 4×4 and motorcycle special events. The Lower Ranch is a 2400-acre area with 64 miles of trail reserved for ATV and motorcycle use only. The entry fee is $5 per car, plus another $5 to stay overnight in any of the five campsites located in the area.
We pulled into the ranger station in the Lower Ranch, and the rangers (who are used to seeing all sorts of insane trucks) immediately started asking about our truck, where we got the work done, what type of shocks we had, etc. It was quickly becoming clear just how special Maybeline was, and we were proud to be driving her. A few minutes later the inquisition ended, so the rangers handed us a map, pointed us in the right direction, and we were on our way.
We entered the Upper Ranch and it was clear that we had come prepared. I left Maybeline in 2HI to powerslide around the corners as Cadamie scrambled to buckle all four points of his racing harness (sissy), and I couldn’t stop giggling like a schoolgirl. This machine soaked up every bump, and Cadamie had to continuously remind me that the singletrack trail we were on had two-way traffic (again, sissy).
We found our way to some more serious trails (Hollister Hills uses a rating system similar to ski resorts, with smooth fire trails rated green circles, more serious trails with moderate hills blue squares, and the most extreme trails black diamonds). I put Maybeline into 4HI while Cadamie jumped out to lock the hubs, and we let the old girl show us what she is truly capable of.
Spreadin’ the word
While it’s definitely fun to romp around in Maybeline, a big part of the Solar Truck Story is generating and measuring interest in solar powered electric vehicles. We’re setting out to do just that, and to determine what can and cannot be done with today’s technology. Along the way we’re creating awareness about electric cars, solar power, and other alternative fuels through our partner sites including solarpowerauthority.com and biomassauthority.com.
One of the first ideas we came up with to help quantify the exposure and interest we would be generating was to put a website address on the side of the truck and then measure the number of visits that page received. One important concept in this experiment was to separate the traffic that came directly to the site from that which found it’s way using a search engine or some other path. Additionally, we we would need to map out where the traffic was coming from in order to prove that it was people who physically saw the truck responding to our advertisement sticker.
Once we had printed the sticker and placed it on the sides of our truck we parked it on different streets in “hot spots” around town where we knew people would be. The first parking location was on Castro St. in Mountain View for four hours on a Friday night. The second spot was at Santana Row for one hour midday on a Saturday. Before either one of our two parking spots we purchased this domain and installed analytics as well as an email signup form (you can see what the original page looked like here). All the while we were wondering just how engaged people would be with our concept. Would they be willing to actually share their email address on faith alone? How many people would come just based on a sticker?
For all of you early readers who actually visited the site and signed up, thank you, your information is safe and we appreciate your support! For all of you new readers, sign up using the form on the right side of this page now! Below I have posted an image from Google Analytics showing the traffic spikes on the two weekends that we first left Maybeline parked in downtown Mountain View. My estimate is that there is a 30% drop off at each level of exposure. Somewhere in the range of ~100 people saw the truck each day, ~30 of those took interest in it, ~10 of those visited the site, ~3 of those signed up for the email form.
You can see where traffic spiked up as soon as we put the sticker on the side of the car (before we even took it downtown) and then where it hit the highest peaks on the days when we parked it in high traffic areas. Later on we discovered that that one of the original visitors entered our URL into StumbleUpon which in turn delivered a few views from Canada and western Europe. Ultimately we had 42 direct visits (people who came to our site based on the sticker alone, without using a search engine) and of those 12 who joined our email list. This experiment is a step towards the development of our solar truck and it will be used to justify further expansion and funding! Below you can see our email signups, blurred for the protection of those who have joined.
My first loan… rejection
I laughed, I cried, we sang, and had fun. Well, today was one of those cried sort of days. Dave and I have been investigating loans for some time now so that we can afford the electric motor, batteries, and solar panels that will be used on Maybeline. We estimate that depending on the systems we choose it could cost between $15 and $50 thousand dollars to get everything right. That said, neither one of us have more than $5K cash on hand, and since we are both in the process of moving in together (into a house with a garage to work on the truck) and both of our jobs are sort of sketchy, we should probably try to keep our risks low.
One strategy we developed to A. Get money, and B. Not risk our necks, is to cosign on a low interest business loan! Unfortunately, due to the housing market crash and the economic downturn we are experiencing, along with our short credit histories and lack of experience (or willingness to give up shares of our company) that isn’t going to happen so easily. Once we realized that most small business loans have to be with member banks (somewhere that you have been for a year or so) and are taken for more than $250K (while we only need $15K) we started looking elsewhere. I reached out to my bank and learned about a signature loan for $20K that would allow us to cosign but would have 10.5% interest. This seemed like a good bet, and even though we couldn’t use our cars or other personal assets to secure it or reduce the interest rate, it still fit our immediate need for capital.
So, we went online after speaking with the reps at my bank and filled out the application. Instantly approved it read! Eureka I thought, that’s pretty awesome… and I mean, I do have 750 credit rating with zero debt, so maybe that’s normal. Four days later, that’s today, I still hadn’t heard anything back from the bank about how to get the money for our car so I decided to give them a call. To my dismay, we have actually been rejected for the loan and now we’re back to square one. The default, fall back option is credit cards. Yum, sounds like a big mistake though right? Having only ever had $2K worth of credit I will now extend that to $30K (since only using half of your credit at once keeps your score high apparently) and I’ll use $15K to put Mabeline back in the race! Check back often… I’ll let you know how it’s all going
Lowering our overhead
Yesterday I left my posh apartment near downtown Mountain View in favor of an old sofa in a room half the size on the fringes of town. I used to swim and jacuzzi nightly after a short workout in the community gym which featured two flat screen TV’s. I could easily walk the three blocks to downtown Castro Street where I would meet friends for sushi or the two blocks to the gymnastics center where I coach on the weekends.
It’s going to take a bit of getting used to but this move significantly reduced my rent which means I can put that same money towards Maybeline (and keep my shirt if things go south at the startup where I work). I got myself a small 5×5 storage unit at Public Storage (apparently the creator of that company is the world’s 15th richest man) and I packed the rest of my stuff into boxes. I put my old bed on Craigslist as “free” and got 7 responses between 11pm and 6am (when I started moving) and out she went (to an RA at Stanford). We’re all set now, gearing up to purchase the motor, adapter, and batteries… I wonder if I can sleep in Maybeline??
Checking out the TechShop
Well, folks, after hearing people talk about the TechShop in Menlo Park, California for two years, I finally made time to stop by, and I am very glad I did. You see, a year and a half ago a traumatizing thing happened to me. As you may or may not know, I first ventured out to California’s bay area to study for my M.S. in mechanical engineering at Stanford University. Stanford has an amazing machine shop called the Product Realization Lab (PRL for short) where I spent hundreds of hours of my time working on projects and creating various things. The PRL was outfitted with machines ranging from Haas CNC vertical mills to a $200,000 LaserCAMM, and even a foundry for casting aluminum, bronze and precious metals, and I have used them all.
As I was wrapping up classes in preparation for graduation in early 2007 I was informed by Craig Milroy, the instructor of my CNC class and head of the PRL, that I wouldn’t be able to use the PRL after I graduated. I had completely overlooked the fairly obvious fact that it would be completely impractical to continue allowing Stanford alumni to use the PRL after graduation. Obvious or not, though, I was crushed. This oasis of creativity that I had grown so attached to would soon have its doors closed to me, and my ideas would be left floundering in my mind without access to the resources necessary to bring them into this world.
With the discovery of the TechShop, I will once again have a manufacturing outlet for my ideas. Granted, the TechShop doesn’t have a $200,000 LaserCAM or any CNC mills (yet), but it definitely does have the same atmosphere of creativity and collaboration that I had grown to love at Stanford’s PRL. Within minutes of arriving at the TechShop I had already met and had great conversations with Tom Atkins, director of facilities development, and Lynne Angeloro, director of educational services. I can tell you now that I will definitely be spending a ton of time here in the very near future.
Electric Vehicle Rally tomorrow
For the past few weeks Dave and I have been pretty excited to attend tomorrow’s EV Rally at Palo Alto High School. Electric cars are definitely catching on and this “rally” event could be one of the last of it’s kind as EV’s go main stream. It’s fun to convert a car and show it off as a custom job but the breakeven point to produce these green machines on a large scale is just around the corner and then they will become commonplace.
Just two weeks ago I met Martin Eberhard (founder of Tesla Motors) and saw his collector’s edition EV. Since then I’ve already seen two more driving around on the roads in Mountain View and Palo Alto, and both were non-collector’s versions. We’ve still got a while until the Volt and other high efficiency cars make it to market but already today 100mpg modified Prius plugins are road and people are taking notice…
Tomorrow will be our first chance to meet face to face with members from the companies that actually make electric vehicles and the motors and components that make them run. I’m especially excited to connect with people from AC Propulsion (the company that makes the AC motor for the Tesla Roadster), Corbin Sparrow EV (a company that makes three wheeled short range EV’s), and our friends from the TechShop (a community garage/workshop with tools and resources we will use to work on Maybeline).
I’ve got my fingers crossed that things go well with Maybeline, she still doesn’t know how to run without gasoline and I just hope the other cars don’t pick on her or make fun. She may be behind the times right now but I think once she’s got a few solar panels on lockdown and a solid motor under her hood she’ll get the respect she deserves and people will forget all about this messy “phase” of her life. She certainly will smell a lot better! Well, at least she has four wheels and can go off road, that’s something not many EV’s can claim in today’s market!
Palo Alto Electric Car Show
In the last post I talked about the EV show here in Palo Alto, CA. Below I’ve posted a short video of the show for you to follow along with. We ended up seeing a friend from the TechShop who had his custom built Segway (which doesn’t have speed limiting built in). Pretty cool device! The problem is, if you go too fast… it will just crash forward, it’s not smart enough to ease off and lean you back.
You might be surprised to find out that electric cars have been around for over 100 years! At the conference I saw one of the real old fashioned ones… which had a sick horn. The idea of going to this conference was to learn more about the field as we move to convert Maybeline to all electric. At the conference we even saw two solar electric cars!
When fortune smiles… Smile back!
This morning while walking to my job in Downtown Palo Alto I spotted my fourth Tesla Roadster! Unlike the other ones I’ve seen recently though, this one wasn’t driving or parked in a busy area, it was just sitting in someone’s driveway… door ajar. These opportunities don’t come along everyday, the chance to steal a Tesla I mean ;) Okay, okay, I would never actually steal one! I saw this more as an opportunity to make a new friend than anything else. I promise… Really…
It took a little bit of courage to approach the house, I felt like I was going out of my way to share a trivial piece of information and this is a pretty nice area; I wasn’t quite sure how I would be received. Once when I was younger while waiting at a stoplight I noticed that the car next to me had their gas cap off and open so I put my car in park and dashed out to close the cap for them. Unfortunately in that case I got yelled at because they thought I was vandalizing their vehicle. Thankfully, this time things went a little bit better for me. As I knocked at the door nobody came to answer for a long time and I started to get discouraged and almost leave, but I saw a tiny note on the door that said “moving supplies in the back” so I decided to walk around and see if anyone was there. This was a good idea because no sooner than I poked my head around the side yard I saw a woman carrying some supplies. I said “pardon me ma’am” and she came to speak with me.
I told the woman that the Tesla in the driveway was left open and that I just wanted to help make sure the car was okay. She was very thankful and explained that she had just received the car a few days ago. I could tell she was excited about the car and she seemed to know a few things about the history and functionality of electric vehicles. As we talked more I found out that she is an OG (Original Googler) and that her Tesla is the third one ever made! What an awesome piece of automotive history to be a part of… She then offered to let me sit in the car and as I smiled and approached the passenger side she said “no, you should get in the driver’s seat!” I didn’t want to upset the kind lady so I obliged and let me tell you, it’s pretty fricking sweet inside!
I haven’t spent much time in performance cars but I was surprised by how wrapped up and nestled it felt being in the driver’s seat. I was also amazed at how the interior and features of the car resemble the inside of a computer case. I’ve built a few nice computers and modded a few cases, specifically one Lian Li a few years back, and the aluminum pedals and dash accessories of the Tesla remind me of the case I used to have.
So the lady and I swapped info and decided to be friends, she said she wouldn’t forget to lock her doors and keep them shut next time and I promised to show her Maybeline once she’s done. Maybe we could even race them…
A Day of Craziness
Where do I begin… When we last left off, Maybeline was romping around the sand dunes of San Luis Obispo Coast in Oceano. It was there that disaster (finally) struck and her front right drive shaft was broken. We weren’t even jumping her (anymore), just cruising at high speed across some uneven dunelets. I heard a loud bang and then chuk chuk chuk… and I knew something was wrong, I looked over to Dave who just kept staring ahead, eventually he said “yeah I heard it too” and finally he slowed us down. I didn’t realize it at the time but not stopping immediately probably saved us that day. Dave and I assessed the situation once the car was off and we could hardly believe it – the drive shaft was completely detached, completely dangling from the inside of the wheel. We knew that without four wheel drive the truck didn’t have much of a chance in the deep loose sand, and we were still several miles out on the dunes, the feeling wasn’t good. So we shrugged at each other and just started digging. We dug out the sand in front and behind each rear tire (the only tires that would work with the front drive shaft out of commission). Once we had the sand clear we put the floor mats in front of both tires on the ground to give the car something to grip to once we tried to make our escape. Unfortunately, despite our digging and matt laying strategery Maybeline just kept sinking each time we tried to get her going.
We eventually resorted to calling the park rangers for help, but just before they arrived a fellow dune romper saw our distress beacon (me waving my t-shirt frantically in the air) and came over to help us. Since we had already tried to escape several times before the truck had sunk into the sand about a foot and a half. In order to get her level (before trying the tow) Dave and I layed on our backs and leg pressed the rear end of Maybeline while our new our friend filled sand in below the tires. We did this a few times and eventually the truck was back on level ground!
The tow ultimately worked but it required me pushing the back of Maybeline by foot, Dave flooring it inside behind the wheel and the tow rope truck gunning it. I’m pretty sure Dave was redlining it (I got a face full of sand as Maybeline sped off towards the beach) but we made it out, and I only had to walk a mile back to the coast in blistering hot sand, a face full of dirt. Did I mention I had taken my shoes off at this point?
Well at least the truck still ran… temporarily at least. On our way home from the dunes (a three and a half hour drive) we started hearing banging noises again and it was only a matter of time before our engine completely gave in and threw a rod. Thwock, thwock, thwock, thwock, thwock, brrrrrrrrr and there we were, on the side of a freeway with a broken car. No more four wheel drive, no more working engine, no gas stations or pull offs nearbye to give us a hand, just speeding whizzing highway traffic and the blistering hot sun.
Responsibility Part I
Yay trucks are fun, yay!! haha oww…. she’s broken, oh the economy just took a dive and I lost my job, ouch my stock is plunging and I can barely afford rent, yikes that child is getting his lips on the drinking fountain. I guess maybe the solar electric car will have to wait?
Waiting isn’t fun, we know that! We’ve learned that the hard way, lots and lots of waiting. Do you know how long I had to wait to drive? Sixteen fricken years homie! Now you’re saying I have to wait MORE years to drive a bada$$ solar electric baja truck? Snap, it’s a good thing I learned all those solid waiting skills when I was young, or I’d be going crazy right now! Today’s episode is sponsored by the letter W… w is for waiting and waitfull and waited. The theme of waiting has continued in recent months on two levels. First, there were two months of car storage that Maybeline had to endure while I lost my job, Dave got a 50% pay cut, and everyone and their mother (especially their mother) lost a fortune in the stock market. Pedron’s Auto Storage was nice enough to let us pay $100 per month to keep our truck there, so at least she wasn’t getting vandalized or condemned… but $100 is kind of a thorn in your side when you’re eating Easy Mac on a daily basis to save money for solar panels and electric batteries.
I knew it was finally time to take action and bust Maybeline out when I realized that it was time to mail in another check to cover December. She deserves better than that, especially for the holidays. So I called my trusty tow truck company (South Bay Towing) and proposed an engine replacement drive shaft fix to my handy neighbor Harry (who is a mechanic) and set things into motion. Unfortunately, that motion ended abruptly when my tow time was side-stepped by another “priority tow”. I sat on my butt for two hours in the car storage area waiting and hoping that my day off would be put to good use. It’s a funny thing, car storage areas are a lot like car graveyards. I got to see most of the lot as I hiked to and from the automatic gate to re-enter (which locks guests in every 45 minutes if you don’t cycle your card). Seeing all of those other decrepit cars made me feel for Maybeline, who has definitely seen better days.
Eventually the tow truck did come and my frantic phone calls to the repair friend Harry (who was already running late) could mean something ended and we began the towing adventue.
Responsibility Part II – Towing Adventure
When we last left our intrepid hero, Cadamie, Maybeline (a custom prerunner style 86′ Toyota) was trapped in a graveyard-esque car storage facility in San Jose, CA! Cadamie and Maybeline made a delayed escape to meet up with Harry in Saratoga so that a new gas motor could be installed along with a new drive box (or something).
The towing bit of the day, the simple part that I had outsourced to a “professional” did not go as planned, not one bit. First of all, due to a car accident he was late by two hours. Second, my mechanic Harry was leaving work and only had a limited window of time before personal plans were to take effect. I was stressed, and bummed to be paying so much money, wasting my time, and delaying friends. Once we were on the road with the towtruck I figured the hard part was over. I was so, so very wrong.
The tow truck driver Jeff was going to follow me to the location but he had a GPS in his car so instead of trying to coordinate a train we just split up and I went to Jack In the Box to get a much needed chicken sandwich (I had been waiting over 2 hours). I left Jack’s (thinking I was behind the tow truck) but ended up arriving at Harry’s farm ahead of the tow. No Maybeline, just me and an upset looking Harry waiting in the fading and darkening hours of the evening for the truck to come. It turns out Jeff got lost or turned around, but eventually he showed up and we figured everything was fine. Unfortunately, during that time Harry’s car (which was needing some work) died. This wasn’t such a big deal because it started back up but it became a much bigger problem later when he tried to escort the tow truck along a dirt road through a forested area of Saratoga where the farm workshop was.
Harry’s Mercedes died right there in the middle of the single track dirt road forest trail and the tow truck couldn’t get around! Thankfully Harry knew another way in and helped back the flatbed towtruck up and reposition for a loop to the other side of the farm. This would have been a good idea except the loop was under construction and there was a port-o-fence up at the very end of the loop on this freshly paved, walled in driveway. At this point Harry has been waiting three hours and is late to meet his friends so he directs me to help him move the port o fence out of the way and just drive the tow truck down the driveway. I started asking him if that was alright but he just said shook his head asked me to start pulling. I pointed out the padlock and hay bails holding down the fence and he paused just long enough for us to hear an Indian fellow yelling “what are you guys doing to my fence!”
The Indian guy was pretty pissed off. We were tresspassing on his property, tearing out his fence, and on the verge of cracking the edge of his new driveway. An argument ensued and I pulled back to let the tow truck driver and Harry sort it out. Poor Maybeline had to wait on the flatbed until we finally decided to try to back the tow out. I would find out later that this caused some damage to the tow truck (apparently the large trucks are manual and aren’t meant to go backwards like that). Careful as we were, the back end of the tow truck also bumped the cement walls of the driveway so the Indian guy really got screwed that night, nobody was happy (my apologies Indian guy if you’re reading this).
Jeff, the tow truck guy was pissed now and upon arriving back at the entrance to the farm dirt road simply unloaded my non-working Toyota in the middle of the street and left us. Harry assured me that we’d find another way to move here to the farm, but without power steering it wasn’t going to be easy. I waited as he called his buddy Tim (who lives on the farm) to come get us with one of their trucks. Tim eventually arrived and we tied a rope to Maybeline’s front push bumper to begin the tow.
It all worked out pretty well, we cut across the field and then all got out and pushed Maybeline the last hundred feet up the driveway to her final resting place. Over the following weeks I helped locate a 22R engine and the parts needed to get Maybeline back on the road. This whole thing cost $120 towing and $1,500 in parts and labor from Harry and Tim… But, at least I don’t have to pay $100 a month for storage now.
In the video below you can see Maybeline chilling on Tim’s farm with her engine taken out. Towards the end I zoom in on the thrown rod on the sideo of the engine block. You can also see the racing clutch that had been added and the engine bay of the truck (which needs some serious cleaning and rust prevention work).
Here’s one final video of Maybeline driving around the Sand Dunes in San Luis Obispo (where my grandfather was stationed during WWII for part of his active duty). The music is Bears Bears Bears a group that my friend is in. Enjoy:
here. I know the cover image for the movie is a bot hokey so I’ve got another screenshot here. Don’t think you have to like baseball for this movie, it’s more about family and following your heart.
