What the.....

What you see here on the right is a relay. On the left is a 1000 ohm 10 watt resistor. It's wired so that when the key goes to the first position the circuit across the contactor is closed through the resistor. That way there is no sudden rush of current through the contactor when I turn the key to the second position. I did this because the contactor had stuck a couple of times.

I'm on the third charge cycle. After 21 miles my hydrometer read 1.185, which would normally be about 45% charge. This may be close. I could have up to about 9 KWH of capacity in my battery pack. I put 5.54 KWH of juice in on this cycle. That = .26 KWH/mile. I will try to go around 30 miles on the next charge, monitoring with the hydrometer, and see how it goes.

I'm figuring out the shifting. I'm driving mostly in 3rd, then at about 30 I can pull it out of gear and it slides easily into 5th.
It has good pick-up and is fun to drive.