Sunday, July 12, 2015

Details, details

The slog continues.  Now that the truck is home, I can jump out and work on it easier.  This week I have been shoring up some of the essentials... like brakes and clutch.

During the drive home, I discovered that the brakes were not nearly strong enough.  They looked good while the truck was on jacks, only having to stop the wheel.  However, they did not do a good job stopping the truck!  Additionally, the clutch pedal broke off (!!) about the time we hit Stoughton.  Of course you don't 'need' a clutch pedal, but it sure does help.

I drove the truck to Ellsworth Welding in town and Jeff Ellsworth (who loved the truck) figured it had to be removed to weld.  So, I removed it the next day.  It was a bit of a puzzle, but came off easily after I figured that one out.

He did a great job of welding, and as a bonus, he reshaped the metal so that the pedals sit much better.  They had bent out of shape after all the years of use.


Notice the brake master cylinder under the floor


The pivot is squeezed between the cab hanger


The other major accomplishment was fixing a software 'bug'.  I was having trouble with the truck 'starting'.  Sometimes when I turned the key, everything was AOK, and sometimes it would only run the motor for a second before shutting down.

After several e-mails with Jack, I finally found the dopey mistake that I made.  You have to tell the controller box which outputs are hooked to where.  In my case I have outputs running to the two contactors, the main contactor and the pre-charge contactor.  I had them assigned to Outputs 3 & 4, but the wires were hooked to 4 & 5.  When it worked, it was just lucky that the output 3 came up in a state that happened to run the truck.  It shouldn't have worked at all.  So, when I fixed that, everything now comes up and runs very reliably.

Here are a couple of pictures of the controller software.  The guys at EVTV, Jack and Colin mostly I think (not sure), did a great job.






Saturday, July 4, 2015

On the road again!!!!

The good old Studebaker truck is once again on the road!!  

On Thursday I drove it home from bb7, 18 miles.  It was the best birthday present I could have.  There are three videos below.  Depending on your level of patience, you can watch the short (0:11), medium (10:00), or long version (17:00).

It was a great day, tremendous fun.  I want to thank the team at bb7 for all of their help.  When the truck is truly road worthy, I'll take it back for all to have a go at driving and enjoying it.



Greg Falendysz          Andrew Hawkins
Ben Paprocki              Bob Schofield
Bryon Sande               Duane Kaufman 
Jesse Ransom             Mark Begin
Mike Andrew             Peter Davis
Rob Podell                 Jason Henry
Dave Bauer                Ted Myers
Jon Mick                    Larry Holley
John Miller                John Smith

And perhaps some others that I missed... sorry if I missed someone

Short Version (0:11)

Medium Version (10:00)


Long Version (17:00)
by far the best!