Big day.

I bought a 25k potentiometer this afternoon. I received a brilliant suggestion from a gent on a forum I frequent for my throttle issue. The throttle control lever on the steering column only has 90' of rotation, but I need 0-5k range of resistance to give me the full range of power from the controller. Since 90' range of motion potentiometers are hard to find / don't exist, he suggested I just get one with a higher range and use less of it. Perfection. I built this throttle body out of piece of stainless my friend gave me, it used to be a stand for a milk frother. Thanks Tony!

A bit of leftover copper pipe and 2 holes for cotter pins = ghetto universal joint.


Then something more interesting happened.

How did this get here?



Looks pretty at home in the garage next to my sister's car.


Sorry the pictures are kind of dark. Not sure why.

So, less than 4 months since I bought the thing. Not bad for the first drive. The tensioner worked pretty well, I had to re-tighten it after the first drive to the front yard, but then it was fine for the 15 minutes I spent messing around.

Fourth gear is much faster than I thought it was going to be. My dad drove it too and estimated it to be around 30kph. I don't even think that was the top speed, the driveway is 300 feet long, and it kept accelerating for the whole length. I might try it on the road tomorrow to see if I can get it going faster. It gets kinda scary actually, considering there's a fair bit of play in the steering.

Regardless, I am really, really happy right now.