Yesterday I figured I was ready to take Silent E to work. But she really needed a bath. So I went to the wash-it-yourself place down the street.

Besides the cleaning, this would also give me another chance to check energy consumption, and a chance to check for leaks.

Good news! No leaks! Well, okay; a minor leak on the sides of the hood. I expected that, since the hood has been bent and needs to be replaced. None of the sensitive components are there, and they all stayed bone dry. And energy consumption was 315Wh/mile downhill, 323Wh/mile uphill. (These are very minor slopes we're talking about here. Maybe 40 ft in almost two miles.)

Bad news! The clearcoat has separated from the paint on the bottom driver's side corner of the hatch. Water gets stuck in there. I pricked it with my keychain screwdriver, but I couldn't squeeze all the paint out.

Of course, that wouldn't stop me from driving it to work. But the bad regulator I found when I tried to charge up did.

It was constantly on green. I disconnected it, but no help. I swapped its leads with the adjacent regulator; they both lit up red. But when I came back to check, it was back to its old tricks. I gave up for the night.

The next morning I replaced it with a suspect regulator. That never turned red on startup, so I replaced it with a good regulator. Then I fixed the power brakes wiring. (Its vacuum pump's pressure switch was connected directly to the battery. Any time the vacuum dropped below its setpoint, the pump came on to pump it back up. Regardless of whether the car was 'on' or not.)

That was two false starts, including tracing wires around. Eventually I got everything sorted out, and spliced the vacuum pump's power into the ignition switch, before the inertia switch. Even if I get in an accident, the power brakes will still work, as long as I don't pull out the key.

Unfortunately, while I removed the wire that originally went to the battery, I made some sparks. It blew a fuse somewhere. So I left it charging and went to work.

I found the fuse when I got home. Now I'm going to try to take a trip to the UCF car club. It's dark, and it's farther than I've ever attempted. We'll see if my battery capacity matches my calculations.