JAMES CITY — Ben Avery and Aidan Rogowski have done the heavy lifting, and it paid off.

Earlier this year they bought and converted a 1995 Toyota Corolla to electric power using a forklift engine and golf cart batteries on a budget of $2,000. They’ve run a little over budget, but the car moves under its own power.

“I got excited the first time we drove it,” Rogowski said. “The fact that it actually moved was extremely rewarding.”

The Hampton Roads Academy seniors were inspired to take on the conversion project in January after stumbling upon a series of YouTube videos made by a Canadian man who was converting a gas-powered car to electric. Rogowski suggested they use it as their senior project.

The goal was a viable errand-runner that would go up to 40 mph and have a range of roughly 20 miles.

This summer they found a forklift engine at a junkyard in Atlanta and had it shipped here. They test fit it to the car with success, then revved it up. Something wasn’t quite right.

“There was a bearing that was supposed to be immersed in oil, and obviously it wasn’t anymore,” Rogowski said. “When we tried it out it sounded kind of funny.”

They needed help to tweak the engine to work on the electric system they had planned. An Internet search led them to Electric Motor & Contracting Co. in Chesapeake, which offered to fix it for free since the car was a school project.

Avery said they got the motor back just a few weeks ago. The pair spent their Thanksgiving break getting it into the car and properly connected.

Installation was a milestone because it meant the car was driveable. The catch is that, for now, it requires two people to drive it.

That’s because the engine is hooked to two car batteries inside of the car by sets of jumper cables strung through the window. They’ll disappear eventually, but the project isn’t complete yet.

As it is, one person steers and shifts while the other mans the batteries.

“The start-stop switch is someone holding the jumper cable to the battery terminal,” Rogowski said.

When it’s finished the Corolla will operate off of eight golf cart batteries attached to a controller that will replicate the fuel delivery system in a gas-powered car. It will control the amount of power based on how hard the driver presses the gas pedal.

The batteries and controller have been ordered, but haven’t arrived. Once they do Avery and Rogowski will have to wire them together and connect them to both the controller and the engine. Some of the batteries will be placed in the engine compartment, others will go in the trunk to help distribute the weight.

From there they just have to get new tires, give it a paint job and get it inspected so it will be street legal.

They plan to drive it in the parking lot at Hampton Roads Academy on April 13 when they present their senior project. Rogowski said their physics teacher has expressed interest in buying it once it’s done.