Step 7: Installing the Potbox

Description: Mounting the potbox onto a mounting plate on the front of the engine compartment (Driver's Side).
Estimated Time: 2 hours.
Tools needed: drill, Rivnut tool, various wrenches, flat-head screwdriver.
Caveats: Your vehicle, like mine, may vary from that pictured in the instructions.
Purpose of This Part: The purpose of the potbox is to work as the go-between for the gas (accelerator) pedal and the controller. As noted in the controller installation, the controller controls the electrical amperage that is sent to the engine. The potbox signals how much more or less amperage the controller should put out. When you push on the gas pedal, it will pull the accelerator cable as it always did, but instead of telling the gas engine how much gas to burn for increased acceleration, it will pull on the potbox lever, causing the potbox to signal electrically to the controller how far the pedal is being pushed. The controller increases or decreases the amperage based on whether you push or let up on the pedal. In other words, when you step on the gas pedal, the car goes faster (just as always).

Stuff Needed:




When I looked over the work space, I knew there would be a bit of a problem, this time. This is simply not the same configuration as that shown in the instruction manual picture. There is less room and the ridge used as an edge for the template is in a different location, so the template could not be used.



Here is their picture. The black object (I think that's the brake cylinder) is much higher and closer to the center. This forced me to make a couple of modifications. First, since it is sitting lower, the drilled holes (top and bottom) don't go through to the passenger compartment and I needed to use rivnuts for all four mounts.


Secondly, I needed to drill two new holes in the mount in order to to get it to line up in a place where I could put rivnuts (due to the donut hole indentation on the sheet metal, right where the pre-drilled holes on the left would be placed for bolting).
I don't know whether this will be a problem, but I did get it mounted with the modifications mentioned. I might use a few different sized screws and remount it, but here is how it it mounted to date:

For comparison, here is the installed potbox in the manual.

You can see that it sits much higher. I notice, by the way, that they had a couple of unused holes drilled right where I did mine, so obviously, they had it set up in the past for that modification and lost that plotline at some point.