Plug Bug: Fan on, fan off
The loudest part of my car when I turned it on was two fans for the water cooling setup on the controller. Ideally, the controller should turn the fans on and off and that will be a nice feature once Netgain Controls adds it in. For now, I needed a solution. Wayne, a fellow bug EV’er in Gilroy, suggested the a little CanaKit thermostat. I bought it and assembled it, which was pretty fun since I haven’t ever built any electronic kits before. 
I then made a little box to surround it out of Lexan. Sorry…no pictures, but basically I heated up the lexan with a torch and bent it with a little jig I made. It worked out okay. I then mounted it in the car and set it to control the fans. The temp sensor is mounted on wires, and I simply zip-tied and taped the sensor around one of the water tubes to sense the water temperature. The water pump still runs all the time, but that’s okay as it is rather quiet. I tweaked the temp pot so that it doesn’t turn on when the car is cold, but does turn on once it has warmed up.
Now, the car has a nice silent drive when I start out. Perfect! Just what I wanted….
