September 1st

With the departure date a little over a month away  the build is entering the home straight. The batteries have been ‘balanced’ meaning that all the cell voltages are within 0.01 volt of each other to ensure they’re all ‘pulling together’ when the bike is first started.

I’ve just finished bolting them all into the frame, made a little more difficult by the fact that I couldn’t source the exact same type of Leaf cell for the entire project and, although they fit, the older type of cell that now makes up most of our battery pack is a bit more fiddly to install. Although they look different, the two types are simply different packages for the same four pouch cells.

With the heaviest components now in the frame,  I thought I’d have a cheeky weigh in and at this moment she comes to 163kg. There’s a few bits to add (aluminium covers, a bit of wiring and the seat is off at the moment) but that’s pretty much bang on what she weighed when she first rolled down a dusty Indian track 57 years ago.

My next job is to make up new busbars to link the cells and wire them up to the control systems before I can go back to doing laps of the yard. With a bit of luck and no sparking spanners I can get an MOT and out onto the open road by the end of the week! If you haven’t done so already, please donate to our Kickstarter campaign to help cover the costs of filming our Land’s End to John o’Groat’s trip: if you donate £10 or more you’ll be among the first to see the film as we’ll send out a link to watch it online as soon as it’s finished.