The controller

With the batteries in I knew how much room I had left to work with up front. It was time to build the control board. This board will be nice surface to mount many of the high voltage components to. I ended up using polypropylene (I think 3/8" thick). It's a little more expensive than using some type of wood but is still easy to work with and doesn't have to be sealed and painted later to make it last.

Next I have to wonder how I let so many weeds crop up in my yard. Right! I have done nothing but work on this car for several months. Below I'm setting up a straight guide for cutting the material. I made the mistake of using a metal bit in the jigsaw and ended up with goo. The blade got too hot and polypropylene started melting. You can probably stick with the jigsaw and a wood bit but I didn't confirm that. I ended up switch to the Sawzall with a wood blade. This blade has massively aggressive teeth and was able to cut the material quickly without causing any heat and made for a clean cut. However you cut it, the trick is to do it fast before it gets hot.


I found this heat sink on eBay for $20. What a deal. It wasn't the exact size I needed but very close. You can buy a ready to go heat sink from Curtis but it's like $300+ or something crazy. EV America sent me a flat piece of aluminum for a heat sink which they claim works just fine but I wanted to overdue the cooling on this component since I had the option. I needed to trim off a few of the fins and drill some holes to match the holes already on the controller for a heat sink.


I ended up using the small sheet of aluminum they gave me anyways to provide a mounting surface on the top side of the board. Without this the controller would just fall through since the a hole needed to be cut that was large enough to let the heat sink pass through. You can also see a very thin piece of sheet metal I used to attach the fan(s) too. I current only am using one fan but installed the option for fan two in case I needed to add a second one later.


Did a quick test fit to make sure it all works together nicely before applying the heat compound.

This was like being in kindergarten again. Finger painting is great! I'm applying the heat compound. It needs to go on all pieces of connecting metal. In this case that was actually four sides of metal: The Controller, the metal support plate (both sides), and the heat sink itself.

I started loosely laying components on the board to get an idea of where things might fit. It's gonna be tight.

Finally the control board all installed.

Next we need to wire everything up.