One person's Woodburn story... (MR2 EV drives!)

["Jason Hills" <Jasonhi@ricochet.net>]

Where to start?

I arrived down in Portland at John Wayland's house for breakfast about 9am
on Friday.  The day was spent working on cars ... the White Zombie, Baby
Blue, Pee Wee, and my MR2 EV (oh and getting the Red Beastie ready to tow
cars from Portland to Woodburn and back!).  Of course my time was pretty
much devoted to my car.  And by 3am Saturday morning, it still wasn't ready.
We had lots of people at John's house, and I don't remember all the last
names (sorry!).  Tony (and wife), Bryan, Steve Marks, Mark Mongilo, Tim, at
least (I probably forgot someone) spent the day helping work on all these
cars.  Around midnight Otmar showed up too.

I'll leave the tale of getting tires for the White Zombie for John or Steve
(I think Steve is the one that video'd all the phone calls to UPS - let's
just say that John got UPS to get tires from somewhere in California around
noonish to an airport where John picked them up before 9pm... an amazing
accomplishment).  By the end of the day we knew John would set a new record
or break the transmission.  Run #1 was terribly disappointing for several of
us that were at John's place on Friday, but John said the clutch was
slipping badly, so I think Mark Mongilo headed up the adjustments there.
Next run was a no-op... as expected the transmission was toasted.  Hopefully
we get a good postmortem in the near future...

Baby Blue was running in the morning, but stopping it was a freaky event, so
Tony worked some magic and it stopped nicely with new front brakes after all
kinds of trials and problems.

Pee Wee went had a burned motor that kept Bryan and Tim busy for much of the
day.

The Red Beastie temporarily got low rolling resistance tires all around but
couldn't turn corners (too tall) so kept them only on the back.... and those
are probably history as well later on.  It did an amazing job of towing the
Baby Blue and the garden tractor to Woodburn, but sucked it's pack totally
dry in the process and needed a short rest shortly after exiting the freeway
to recover a bit (actually I hurried ahead and was going to drop off the MR2
EV and come back and two the Beastie in with my Grand Cherokee, but didn't
have to.


But the real story for me was getting the MR2 ready.  I worked Thursday
night until I broke a tap in a plate that I needed to use.  It was late, and
I'd just broken my spare small drill bit - I should have replaced the
original one that I broke a few months ago, but didn't get around to it...
shame on me!), so I called it a night.  On Friday most of the day was spent
working on this one plate that needed the fuse and some other components
installed on it, as well as hooking up the Auburn controller wires
(precharge circuit, relay etc).

As it got towards evening I shifted from trying to do stuff right to "make
it run" mode.  Prior to that I'd been trying to get layout things just right
and debating how to run some of the wires with John and Tony.  Tony helped
come up with some pretty good ideas pretty late, but they weren't going to
materialize in time for the race.  Since I was already tired from only 3
hours of sleep, I was doubting the car would run.

But when Otmar showed up at midnight and was *running* between John's shop
and my car, the energy started to rub off on me.  Soon we finished up all
the high voltage/current wiring and got started on the controller wiring.
Around 3am we stopped.  I was back at John's by 7am ... washing the car
(quickly), put on the new wheels/tires - might as well make it look "okay"
from a distance at least, and if it does run, I'd need the new tires, as I
wasn't going to run on mud & snow rated tires that came with the car when I
bought it.

As John and others were loading the trucks, I was working on more of the
controller wiring... Otmar joined me again, and got out a portable butane
torch to do some soldering.  We were getting really close.... ready to roll,
we took off for Woodburn.

The drive was a lot slower than I'm used to.  The Beastie wasn't liking the
hills and/or John was trying to be kind to the batteries.  We did back up
traffic a fair amount, but on the freeway, pretty much kept at least 40 mph
with peaks up around 65mph when the speed limit was that high.

At the track, I eventually found Bill Dube and he "whined" about the battery
tie downs that Frank "the metal god"had knocked out at 10pm Friday night,
and Otmar had helped install (oh, I didn't mention having to take the whole
front apart to tap some holes I drilled but apparently forgot to tap a month
ago.... <argh>!).  But the not-yet-running car "passed" inspection with
warnings to improve the battery hold downs for the future.... maybe I won't
listen to John on securing batteries for races anymore?  :)  Seeing as the
one Bill really disliked is similar in nature to a tie down that really
concerned me when I first saw Al Godfries Orange 914 in the summer of '97.
Not sure how I got talked into doing something that originally didn't settle
with my idea of "secure enough".

Sometime nearing or shortly after noon I was ready to begin testing the car
for the first time at the track.... key on, main contactor closes and
re-opens.  12v battery was low, no DC-DC converter installed yet (we took it
out Friday rather than finishing the install since there wasn't time).
Charged the little gel-cell in about 20 minutes with my Todd DC-DC kicking
out a solid 10amps into the little 4 ah battery.  Voltage was still sagging
a lot getting to the relay.... so we looked for another "on" key enable wire
(Tony - previous Toyota employee and I and Bryan had all worked on finding
the "correct" wire that my repair manual showed that we wanted to tap into
with no luck on Friday).

With the new "on" 12v line... still nothing... check the pot-box (thanks to
Bryan and Tim (fairly sure it was Tim helping him) for doing most of the
work to get that on the car and attached to the throttle cable - and to
Frank for making the metal mounting part at that last minute.  Shorting the
pot box and still the contactor came on and right back off.

Bryan was helping me with this testing and debugging work, and we talked to
John looking for more ideas to check.  At first I was a little unsure how to
proceed, never having tried to debug something like this, but eventually the
programmer in me kicked into full-debug mode, and I was able to step through
all the wiring testing every link until I arrived at the horrid conclusion:
Auburn Grizzly MPC #4 (or #3? I think 4 - this is off the assembly line) was
defective on arrival!!!!

This was bad.  John and I went to ask Wilde-Evolutions if they happened to
bring a spare, which they hadn't.  A few cell-phone calls later and a
message was relayed to Chyerl (John's wife) and an analog Grizzly from his
home was headed our way.

When it arrived, John was being interviewed, and time was running short for
even getting to run the car if we wanted to try it.  So I started asking for
Otmar... I just wanted someone to help make the pre-charge circuit changes I
needed correctly and re-wire quickly and error free.  "This guy" was hanging
around offering to help, and I recognized him, but couldn't place his name.
I wasn't in the mood for getting names, so I kind of ignored him and is
somewhat insistent offer to help and saying it wasn't too hard to do what we
needed to do.  Eventually I realized/figured out or was told he was Randy
Holmquest (sp?)... of course!  Well, at that point, I knew he was as good as
anyone for helping install the Grizzely and we did it in short order.

It worked!  ... I drove it around a bit and people wanted it racing right
off.  I was concerned since I wasn't able to shift as easily as it should,
and wasn't yet feeling comfortable with the feel of the car.. but what the
heck, lets run the strip :).

Apparently I left a good patch of rubber taking off in 1st gear.  I don't
really remember first, since it was a short burst of power and I shifted to
2nd .... then went for third, but it ground, and the clutch was total sponge
again.  I tried for 3rd several times, and then went back to 2nd so I
wouldn't be coasting at least.... then went at 3rd again and got it (with 4
or 5 pumps of the clutch for each shift I'm making here now...).  And hit
4th gear too ... but was also wondering where the end of the 1/4 mile was.
Eventually I exited and got the 22.306 time for the first run.

My Dad and I went to Woodburn to get brake fluid and some hose to bleed the
clutch some more.  I didn't think I'd gotten all the air out when I did it
at home before.  When we got back Mark Mongilo had already bleed the system,
but it turned out to not be good yet either.  We worked a bunch more on it
and still no luck.  Finally I got urged into running it again, but all in
3rd gear.

Madman Rundman went up against me in Baby Blue (144 or 156 volts and the
DCP1200 vs. 192volts analog Grizzley in 3rd gear only).  Needless to say
Baby Blue launched from the line (well, okay, I got .31 sec on him with a
near perfect .536 reaction time vs. his .846 (.500 is perfect))  But from
then on it was catch up, and by the very end I was only a bit behind
finishing in 20.973 sec vs. his 20.515 sec.  If I'd have dared try a 3-4
shift I might have caught him since I could tell I went from lack of power
on launch all through the power band and into just reving the motor.  Not
bad for a "direct drive" :).

Well, now I'm back home, and need to put stuff together "right", and fix the
clutch... maybe next time...

I was VERY pleased to see Bob Boyd with his 91 (I think, could be a 92) MR2
run a 17.7xx time, setting a new record for 192volt cars.  A little saddened
to see John Bryan's Giha unable to get below 19 seconds - he needs real
tires desperately!

The highlight for me was seeing Rod knock of that 11.9xx time.  Dennis'
10.6xx times were great, but it's a drag rail, not a "car", and we knew his
could do that.  Seeing Rod's times (and hearing the report of 12.3xx from
Friday night) was really really exciting.

I would have liked to see what the White Zombie can do... and I would have
liked to see Bill's Wabbit run - I believe I only saw it shread the
transmission, and John tow it back with the garden tractor (which also towed
the Zombie back up onto it's trailer at the end of the day).

Overall, and excellent day (well, for drag racing anyway - I'll be the first
to admit I don't see much fun in drag racing, but it was exciting to bring
down past records and see this push the limits of what electrics can do...
I'll be back, not because I enjoy drag racing, but because I enjoy seeing
the bar continually raised for what electrics can do.

I can't say enough thanks to a few people for their help this weekend:
Bryan, Tony, Otmar and Randy.  All four of them did key things that made the
difference between the car driving and not yesterday.  Also Mark Mongilo,
even if we didn't suceed at getting the clutch working....   And of course
John Wayland, even if he wasn't able to provide much actual help this
weekend.  Without him the car wouldn't have been built.  John has been an
inspiration to actually go forward with building this car, a source of parts
and ideas, but most of all a friend through the whole process.

Special thanks also go to Bill Dube and a years worth of "Wabbit Weports"
for getting me from being interested in electric cars to really wanting to
build one as well as for having the Wabbit in Vancouver BC summer '97
causing me to make the trip up there (where I met John, saw what the "Wabbit
Weports" produced etc).  And to Al Godfried for the 914 that along with the
Wabbit and the Blue Meanie are the cars that most influenced the design of
the MR2 EV ... even if it is Orange :) :)

...off to the garage for me now...

...Jason Hills