Lights, Camera, Action!

Our new school year is now underway, and one of our first tasks was to lead the homecoming parade.

Although the game didn't turn out in our favor, the vehicles were a big hit, especially the new lighting system we have added to the car.

We are busy adding a similar system to the truck, and hope to have another surprise in store before this weekend's Spot Festival.

We hope to have both vehicles in top condition before our first competition, the NEAT rally at NCCAR on October 18-19.

Raffle ticket sales at Hampstead Community Center

Today, several EV13 Team members sold tickets at the Hampstead Women's Clubs annual Craft Fair in the Hampstead Community Center.  The event was held from 8-1 and there were several hundred attendees throughout the day.  The day was a success with Brady and Ryan hitting their goal of 25 tickets sold!  That makes for four of ten members reaching their sales goal!  We hope to raise $2500 with the raffle so we can purchase a new set of Lithium cells for the MR2.

NEAT EV Rally results

The Topsail Electric Vehicle Team travelled to the 17th annual NEAT EV Rally in Northampton County this past weekend at the NCCAR facility. The students competed in seven events and tied for first place overall in the competition. The team had many compliments for their attitude and work ethic. They represented Topsail High and Pender County with class and dignity...as always. One instructor even wanted to take Ryan Mowrey back with him to show his students how to act!  The weather cooperated for the most part, and the vehicles performed very well.  Our truck, nursing a battery with a bad cell was only able to manage 12 laps of the NCCAR 2 mile track.  The Toyota MR2 drove 56 miles in the range and could have travelled another 25 miles but had won the event.  The lithium batteries make a huge difference in the range and performance of the car. 
  We would like to congratulate the NEAT team for their results and thank them and their instructor Thomas Pope, along with Harold Miller, for putting on a fine event.  We look forward to next year!  We will practice the pit crew before the event this time.

The results were as follows:
First overall
Acceleration: First Ranger
Acceleration: First MR2
Range: Second Ranger
Range: First MR2
Design: First MR2
Autocross: First Ranger
Autocross: First MR2
Jeopardy competition: Second

New Warp 9 install

Thanks to Bob Batson at EV America, and George Hamstra at NetGain motors, we were able to get our old motor covered under warranty.  Not only that, the motor that we received was actually the new Warp 9 with 28 improvements that will help overall efficiency!  The new motor went in without a hitch, but we seem to have noticed a new problem with the transmission that we never noticed before, a rattling at certain RPM's.  We think it was pre-existing, but we can not do anything with it until after we compete in the NEAT Rally competition next week at the NCCAR facility in Roanoke Rapids, NC. We think it may be a synchronizer, but will not know until the transmission is removed and taken apart.  We only hope it hold out until after the NEAT Rally.

Spot Festival 2011 display

We braved the rain and crowds at the 2011 Spot Festival in Hampstead, NC on Saturday to display our vehicles.  All 10 members were in attendance to help raise awareness of our program and the feasibility of electric vehicles as a practical means of daily transportation.  The crowd was a bit less than last year because of the rain, but that did not deter the class from reaching out to anyone who had questions.  A great day of camaraderie for the EV12 Team!

8th Straight EV Challenge title!!!

The Topsail High School Electric Vehicle Team won the EV Challenge final event for the 8th consecutive year this past weekend at the NCCAR complex in Roanoke Rapids NC.  Placing First and Second overall in the competition against 14 schools from as far away as Iowa and Miami.  Our now Lithium powered MR2 actually posted a better time than a $110,000 Tesla Roadster in the autocross event!  Our Ford Ranger scored a perfect 100 in the Vehicle Design category, a feat that has never been accomplished.  The Ranger team dominated in every category and tallied a perfect 10 cumulative score....the best score possible(Low score wins like golf).
The following students won awards:

Truck Team
Troubleshooting - Zach Fouty, Sal Castoro    First Place
Oratorical- Sean Bullock, Stephen Henderson   First Place
Vehicle Design- Alexis Demetrious, Chris Raynor   First Place
Range- Alexis Demetrious, Todd LeMaster   First Place
AutoCross- Joseph Graves   First Place

Modified Car Team:
Oratorical- Zeke Hartner, Joseph Graves     Second Place
Vehicle Design- Tony Capace, Joey Godfrey    First Place
Range- Tony Capace, Joey Godfrey    First Place
AutoCross-  Sean Bullock    Second Place

Website Design-  Shelby Sessions    First Place
School Initiative-  First Place

This has been by far the best class I have ever taught while a Topsail High School.  They represented the school with pride, dignity and class.  The class went into the competition with the motto "Dominate", and they did just that.  As Sean Bullock said, "Preparation = Domination", a formula that has worked for THS EV for 8 years!

Battery boxes and Lithiums

We had battery boxes fabricated by Billy Vaughn at Wilmington Sheet Metal and they fit perfectly!  We will now take on the task of mounting the boxes and wiring the 48 batteries in series.  The other technical issue is providing a means to secure the batteries once inside the boxes.  Always something to do...

2010 NEAT EV Rally Champions!

After two days of competitions, the THS EV11 Team came out victorious.  Capturing first place overall and 10 other trophies made the event our most sucessful ever.  Here were our team results:
First Overall Champion
First, Autocross- Truck class: Joseph Graves
First, Acceleration- Modified class: Tony Capace
First, Acceleration- Truck class: Kevin Mullins
First, Troubleshooting- Stephen Henderson, Sean Bullock
Second, Autocross- Modified class: Sean Bullock
Second, Pit Crew- Alexis Demetrious, Joey Godfrey, Zeke Hartner, Joseph Graves
Second, Jeopardy Challenge: Alexis Demetrious, Sal Castoro
Second, Poster Presentation: Chris Raynor, Sal Castoro

Second, Range- Modified class: Joey Godfrey, Tony Capace
Second, Range- Truck class: Todd Lemaster, Alexis Demetrious

Raffle, Raffle, Raffle. Anyone want a Raffle Ticket?

Buy our raffle tickets!! We will be selling them until December 17th when we have the drawing for several prizes including a $2800 Tempur-pedic cloud supreme mattress. Please contact us if you would like to purchase them online.  They are 1 for $5 or 3 for $10.

Homecoming 2010

The electric Ranger and Mr2 led the homecoming parade at halftime Saturday night.  Also, we had a member of the homecoming court ride in our electric Miata.  I think this would be the first time an electric vehicle was used by a student on a homecoming court!  We were also selling raffle tickets at the game.  Make sure you contact us if you would like to purchase them.  1 for $5 or 3 for $10.

AutoCross at CFCC

    Several hundred auto enthusiasts were "shocked" to see how well a battery powered MR2 can do on an Autocross course.  Thanks to Brad Draughn and the Cape Fear Chapter of the SCCA, we were allowed to make several runs on their Autocross course Sunday at the CFCC North Campus. EV11 team member Sean drove with co-pilot Brad for two runs, finishing with a respectable 55 second run, good practice for the Autcross event we will participate in at NCCAR this November.  

    Brad, a tech for Toyota of Wilmington, took the controls for two runs with a low time of 49 seconds. His first drive in an EV, Brad was impressed with how well the MR2 performed.  He definitely had an "EV grin"!  The fastest time of the day was in the low 40's, so we did very well against our gas powered competition.  

A day full of display

Friday was a busy day for the EV class.  The entire Pender County Schools employees came to Topsail High School for the beginning of school Convocation.  Over 900 employees got a chance to see the EV's and ask questions as they made their way into THS for their day of meetings.  Sal was the early bird and did a great job showing the vehicles to anyone who stopped by.

  Later, we showed all three EV's at the football game against Trask.  We positioned the vehicles so that everyone entering the game had to walk by them.  Most people stopped and asked questions and were very positive about our program.

News story on local station WECT TV 6 wilmington

WECT story on Topsail EV program

Winners once again! Trophy count now over 100 in 9 years of competing.

Congratulations are in order for the Electric Vehicle class and their victories this past weekend at the Northampton East EV Rally. We won first place in the Autocross event, Acceleration event and the Range event. The class also placed second in the Troubleshooting event. I was very proud of the class and the way they represented Topsail High School. The event officials commented on how my students had the best manners out of all the schools.The event was held on the Aulander air strip and it was a beautiful day for flying evidently because we had to stop the event and remove cones from the runway a few times!

Fall Festival

We displayed at the Hampstead United Methodist Church annual Fall Festival on Saturday morning. It was a cold fall morning and to make matters worse, the Coastal Cruisers car club did not show up, so we did not get the traffic and attention were would have gotten if they had. It actually looked like we had broken down at the Church! Visitors to the festival kept parking all around us so we decided to leave around noon. Sometimes it is better to cut your losses. Anyway,
thanks to Ryan, Brady, Ashley and Aaron for working a shift even though they didn't have many viewers. There will be many more opportunities in the future to spread the word of Electrics.

It's back!! Up and running again with new Raptor.

We received the rebuilt Raptor controller this week from Peter Senkowsky and installed it during class with the new EV10 students. I must admit, I was apprehensive and nervous about firing it up, but we managed to not let the smoke out and all is well. I have not driven the car enough to determine if this one is "peppier" since it does not have the"mild" chip that Peter had in the loaner controller, but I will keep you posted.
The EV10 students seem very eager to learn and to participate, hope this enthusiasm continues throughout the year as we embrace a new conversion. Next up, installing the DC/DC converter.