I'm Back!

Well it looks like the business trip that I thought was going to be short was a little more than that. I was in Algeria for a little more than a week and then went right to China for several weeks. While I was gone, Hurricane Ike struck here in Houston. Two trees fell on my house and caused a lot of damage. Here are a few pictures of the damage.











After getting the trees removed there were 5 holes in the roof along with the crushed part shown above. Now I have the joy of dealing with the insurance company and repairs. While waiting for that I started working on the car some more.

Before I left I had just received the air conditioning parts. I got them from a company called European Cooler Air in Rockwall, Texas. This is a great company to work with. Since the only real place to mount the condenser is the front trunk and there is limited room now that a battery rack is going there I talked with Jerry West at European Cooler Air and told him that I had only about 2 1/2 inches under the rack and asked him if it could work. He said that he could make it fit. The solution was to put the condenser below the trunk and mount only the fan and drier in the trunk. After a lot of cutting and fitting here is the result.



The receiver/drier is the long black tube on the left. I had to grind a little of the angle iron on the rack to make it fit but it does. I also had to modify the rear mounting of the rack to accommodate the large round hole. It's all bolted in and the hose connectors are tightened up. It looks like it will work. Here is a picture of the underside showing the housing around the condenser installed.



It's not a very good picture because everything is black but hopefully you get the idea.

I also worked on the front relay and battery rack wiring as you can see here.



The relays are ready to go along with the DC / DC converter. After a little caulking around the fan in the front trunk I will put this in an finish the front wiring. Up next is the installation of the blower housing in the passenger compartment.