My (Former) Battery Powered Folly

I sold my sparrow. I'm finally free!

back in the day, when dot.com money was flowing, i bought a corbin sparrow. i was happy to own an electric car, but i'm really sorry i gave my money to those bastards. corbin went into chapter 7 bankruptcy, so i guess i'm not the only one who thought they were doing a bad job...

a few sparrow owners have had the delightful experience of having their cars catch fire while driving down the road. the culprit appears to be brake lines shorting out against a battery post. i zip-tied my brakelines to the straps of the two lower batteries (not having seen corbin's suggested solution yet).

however, while i was in there, i noticed something disturbing. one of the large battery cables runs down from the passthru, and behind the frame that holds the batteries, making a 90 degree bend around a square metal strut. this didn't look like a good idea to me: a bit of rubbing, and you'd have a nasty arc. you can see here that there was already some wear on the cable. to prevent further problems, i made a curved guide out of some 1/16" ABS (dremel and crack-torch to the rescue), and zip-tied it into place. sorry, no picture, i forgot to take one, and i'm not going to the trouble to pull that battery out again.

anyways, the thing is cute as a button (though my wife claims that it looks like a giant nose):

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