Kiwanis Presentation

From left to right:  Todd, Alexis, Sal, Zack, Josh, Joey, Stephen, Chris

Early Tuesday morning, the EV team made a presentation to the Topsail Island Kiwanis club.  We met at 7:00am at the Smokehouse in Holly Ridge for their weekly meeting.  Breakfast was served and we had a 20 minute presentation with a question and answer session.  There was plenty of interest from the 60 members present as they asked the team about the vehicles and the future of electric transportation.  Thanks to the students who attended, who got up very early on a lazy summer day to help promote the program.

New motor install in MR2

Today we installed the new Warp 9 motor into the MR2.  The ADC 9 motor we removed needs to have the commutator surfaced and new brushes. We will refurbish that 6 year old motor as a side project this fall.
   The install seemed to be going well until we realized the Warp9 has a different bolt pattern on the auxiliary shaft end than is on the ADC 9.  We also found that dimensionally, the Warp is a slightly larger motor overall as well.  We ended up having to make some modifications to one of the motor mounts in order to make the motor fit.  The whole process took almost 6 hours, but we had to have the MR2 ready for a presentation at the Surf City Kiwanis meeting tomorrow.

   Thanks to the following students who showed up at 8am to work.  Fouty, Todd, Alexis, Sal, Stephen,  Joey, Tony and Kevin.  It was a long and challenging day, but it was worth it in the end. The install was also a very good troubleshooting exercise.

Classy Chassis car show at Poplar Grove

We took the opportunity to show the truck at the Classy Chassis car show at Poplar Grove today.  The car is out of order right now awaiting a new motor, so we just showed the truck.  There were almost 200 cars there, mostly classic pre-1980 cars, so the attendance and exposure were great.  It was hot and muggy, but still great to get out and allow the students to display the truck and gain experience in showing the public our program.

  Thanks to Sean, Stephen, Tony, Kevin, Marissa and Zach for showing up and helping to promote our program.

p.s That red 1961 Bug belongs to Mr Garrett.  We should convert it to EV!

Electric Miata donated to our program!

Today we took delivery of a 1991 72 volt electric Mazda Miata conversion.  The car has 12 miles on the conversion and the overall mileage is only 105,000!  The car, converted by local businessman Irving Smith, will be used as a rolling learning platform for troubleshooting and project development for the EV class.  Mr. Smith and some of his friends converted the Miata "just to see if they could do it".  After the successful conversion, Mr. Smith decided to donate it to the Topsail Electric Vehicle class so it could go to a good cause and a worthy recipient.

  We will now begin planning the future of the car as a learning tool for the EV class and others interested in electric vehicle conversions.  We are very grateful to Mr. Smith for the donation and promised him the car would become an integral part of our program.

News story on local station WECT TV 6 wilmington

WECT story on Topsail EV program

Extreme Makeover, Electric Edition!

Seems like a good time to show the before and after pictures of our newest conversion.  There is some confusion about this truck.  First of all, it is a new conversion.  This truck is not the old Ranger without stickers, we sold that truck last spring.  Yep, "Roscoe" is a newly converted 2001 Ford Ranger Edge.

Below is a picture of our previous 1996 Ranger we owned for 8 years.

Seven time National Champions!

The EV class traveled to Raleigh this weekend and emerged victorious again.  We collected 11 trophies including first and third overall.  This was the seventh year in a row that we have won first overall in the SMARTT Challenge competition against high schools from as far away as Iowa and Miami.
  The new Ford Ranger conversion took top honors.  We finished the truck just two days before the competition and really felt this was our best effort to date.  Being our fifth conversion, we used our knowledge from the past to help us to make the very best conversion we could do with the budget we had.  All of our hard work paid off with a $1000 check for first place!
  The Toyota MR2 placed third and brought home first place in the Autocross competition, a feat we had not yet achieved. We also earned $500 for third place

Our Overall trophies were:  
1st Overall (Ranger truck
3rd Overall (MR2)
2nd School initiative

1st Website

Our Truck team:
1st Range (Josh Parmeley, Jeff Harris)  53 miles
3rd Troubleshooting (Josh Parmeley, Ryan Stone)
3rd Oral presentation (Aaron Hackett, Sean Bullock)
1st Vehicle Design
2nd Autocross (Ryan Stone, Josh Parmeley, Aaron Hackett)

Our MR2 team:
1st Range (Aaron Hackett, Marissa Ruehle) 32 miles, could have gone 50, but we had already won)
6th Troubleshooting (Ashley Counts, Dakota Adcock)
4th Oral presentation (Arik Jones, Adam Markley)
4th Vehicle Design
1st Autocross (Dakota Adcock)