Firebrid: The Prius v Powered Hybrid Convertible

Feels good to be underway again. Anything temporarily mounted to the car has been removed. Presently assessing if anything deteriorated from the 3 years of storage. Already found an abandoned mouse nest in the A/C duct to clean out. I haven't seen a mouse, but with 5 cats in the house and more outside, I'm not expecting any to hang around.

 

Man, I'm gonna love the 4-wheel disk brakes on the finished car. It beats the old drum brakes any day!

 

Cleaned out and up off of the ground. Next step is to drop the fuel tank so I can weld back in that area.

 

Fuel tank out. Now I can grind and weld back there.

All of that under-body dirt is from when I had the car on a U-Haul trailer towing it in the rain from Ohio to Delaware. Fortunately it comes off easily, bringing back the original shine of the nearly new parts. I am just cleaning as I go for now.

 

Oh, it's GOOD to be back. Hopefully I'll be able to make great progress this summer!

 

Started the long process of stripping the paint to see what is under it. As expected, I'm finding Bondo where I didn't know there was any. I will be stripping paint with the Eastwood SCT for many sessions to come. I want to make sure that I am not welding to something that I would have wanted to replace afterward, plus I need to be sure I'm welding to good metal to get a good bond. If nothing else it will build up my arm strength this summer!

 

Today's progress. Happy Fathers' Day!

 

Sounds like a plan! So very many things on the West Coast my wife and I want to see someday.

 

The good thing about teaching a 3D CAD (Computer Aided Design) class is that I get to use the system for my own parts too. Shown is the new design steering column support that corrects some placement issues with the old one I designed. I currently have it out to be quoted.

 

Wishing progress would be faster, but real life has a way of taking priority.

Looks like I'll need to make some fancy mounting brackets for where the traction battery will be going. I needed to mark it out so that I would know where to strip off the paint and insulation.

 

Not much very photogenic in this part of the project. Making cardboard templates of the pieces I need to weld in place between the Firebird body and Prius v chassis to keep water out of the cabin.

 

Just a quick note to let everyone know that progress is again slow due to out-of-town family responsibilities. If I complete anything worth photographing, I'll post it here.

At least I have a heated shop to play... I mean work in now.

 

Continuing to make patch panels for where the two cars come together.

 

Good day working on Firebrid stuff. Got the next batch of patch panels cleaned and primed with weld-thru primer. They will be welded in place soon. Then in the evening I worked on CAD models of the custom a/c adapter parts to tie the Toyota a/c unit into the Firebird dash. Below is the first of many 3-D printed parts that I will need to properly route the ductwork from here to there. It will be so very worth it to have properly working air conditioning in that car.