Low voltage wiring (trunk area)

The Primary AC Interlock Relay (PACIR) is supposed to be located near the battery charger, which is supposed to be near where the AC plug will reside in the car (to minimize the amount of AC wiring in the car, I suppose).  I'll be following most of the conversions and put the AC receptacle where the gas cap used to be.  Since I couldn't find a spot for the charger in the engine compartment anyway, it all works out to the good.  I found a "surplus" electrical box in the trash at work, so I liberated it to mount in the trunk area of the car to hold the PACIR and the AC power distribution terminal blocks.  I found it convenient to hang it from the back of the main battery box.

The PACIR is energized when the car is plugged in, so it's simple enough to connect the two hot leads from the 220VAC input.  Like so.

The "outputs" from the relay need to run up to the engine compartment to connect to the Secondary AC Interlock Relay and the Key Switch Relay, so I needed to run 4 wires from the PACIR to the engine compartment.  I ran 3 additional wires with these 4 which will eventually connect to the batteries in the radiator battery box for the PakTrakr.  But how to run these 7 wires?  Although I suppose I could have run them along the inside of the passenger compartment and then through the firewall, I chose to pop a hole in the trunk and run them along the underside of the car.  There was a very convenient location right next to the charger to do this.  I couldn't find a convenient location to pop through the firewall without dismantling the dashboard.  Not something I am itching to do at the moment.

Here's the hole with a bulkhead fitting stuck through it.  I used a little piece of silicone rubber to seal around the fitting.

Here's the rear electrical box with the relay wired.  The wires that are just hanging there will be for the PakTrakr.

The 7 wires running along the underside of the car are placed inside a split corrugated sleeve and fed through the clips that were originally used to hold the fuel line.  How convenient!

Main battery racks installed

Trying to catch up with some entries.  I hope I remember what I did a month ago!

Installing the main battery racks:
Before loading them in, I reinstalled the trim panels and the carpeting since I figured it would be really hard to do that after the racks are in place.  Of course I then found out that the trim panel interferes with the box.  So I had to cut a slot in the trim panel on each side near the rear seatbelt anchors.

Here are the main racks in place with the wood bottoms installed.

There are 10 bolts (either 3/8 or M14) attaching the racks to the car frame.  Here are images of a couple of those.  The first picture is looking at the front of the rack where it is attached to the floor of the car where the rear passengers' feet used to be.  The second picture shows the back of the rack where it is attached to the trunk floor just ahead of the spare tire well.  In both cases the floor sheet metal is sandwiched between two 1/8" steel plates.

Now that the racks are in their final resting position, I could finalize the location of the conduit that will carry the main battery cables from these racks to the motor controller and front battery rack.  Here's a picture which shows the caulked opening. The outlet to the junction box located in the hump is seen poking through.  A piece of flex conduit will attach to that and run up to an elbow which will enter the battery box at the level of the top of the batteries.

Before I can assemble the boxes and put the batteries in, though, I need to get the car back on its wheels.  I am worried about the car sitting on jack stands with all that weight!

Things to do before the wheels go on:

• Run the 12V and PakTrakr wires from the engine compartment to the trunk.
• Run the charger wires and #2 battery cables from the rear battery box to the engine compartment (through the PVC conduit).
• Run the wires from the engine compartment to the dashboard (gauge wires, Regen box wires, heater control wires).
• Re-assemble fender skirts and front bumper.
• Complete 12V and signal wiring in engine compartment.