I took today off and spent a good bit of the day working on the car. The primary thing I needed to get done today was get ready to drop the engine in tomorrow. After getting a bit of a flash of insight on how I can mount the I-Squared power controller, I ended up doing that as well.

For more details, read the rest of the post.

While on my way to the dump this morning to get rid of two truck loads of empty boxes, I was debating driving out to harbor freight to pick up a box brake. Its a solid two hour drive out there, but the only other option is paying a fortune to have one shipped. I’d decided the place I wanted to mount the I-Squared power controller was going to be between the larger trunk box and the FFMetal battery box, sunk below the floor so its out of the way. I needed something to bend sheet metal to make a box to fit in there.

While on my way to the dump I started wondering if the Factory Five battery box, which is a standard plastic battery box (which I wasn’t using) was the right size to fit in there. It turns out the I-Squared power controller fits nicely in it, and the box was almost the exact right size to fit in that space. With some cutting and trimming, I had the box shaped to nestle right up under the floor of the trunk.

In the photos, you can see how I notched the box to fit right up against the FFMetal box, and fit right up in the notch between the upper and lower trunk.

The box fits nicely in there, as seen in the picture above with the trunk box removed.

Its a tight fit, but the I-Squared box does fit nicely in the available space. However, I discovered that there was no way I could fit the DB15 cable that connects the power controller to the input box up behind the dash because of low long the connector on the cable was. (The DB15 port is between the two battery posts on the power controller.)

After some head scratching and a drive out to a surplus electronics store, I picked up PCB-mount and solder-connected male and female DB15 connectors. Pulling the insulator off the pins of the PCB mount connector and sticking its pins into the solder-connected one, I used some very fine solder and made a 90 degree male-to-female DB15 adapter, so I can run the cable out vertically.

Tomorrow I’ll insulate the pins after testing it for conductivity and shorts using hot glue, then wrap it in aluminum tape and electrical tape so it is shielded and insulated.

I also got the brake lines riveted into the car.

These lines had previously been temporarily mounted with cleco pins, but needed to be riveted before putting the transmission in.

I also got the lines run from the brake reservoirs to the master cylinders.

The garage and car are ready for the engine tomorrow!