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Apr 26, 2018 21:22:48 GMT
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I'd forgotten about Hydrogen fuel cells. I wonder if 'the powers that be' are not interested because not enough money can be made off it? Or the car manufacturers are not getting behind it?
I remember Jay Leno had a 1915 or so electric car in his 'garage' and Porsche did a hybrid in the early 20s iirc. There's nothing new about this EV malarky.
Its a shame that LPG seems to have died a death. Very few stations stock it now, and it was not stupidly priced (taxed). Conversions are still around £1.2k for a 4 cylinder apparently so not stupid. There's your hybrid right there!
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melle
South West
It'll come out in the wash.
Posts: 1,984
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Apr 26, 2018 22:11:36 GMT
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Don't they say hydrogen is the technology of tomorrow and it always will be? I suppose the lack of infrastructure is the bottleneck whereas power grids are already ubiquitous.
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www.saabv4.com'70 Saab 96 V4 "The Devil's Own V4" '77 Saab 95 V4 van conversion project '88 Saab 900i 8V
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Apr 26, 2018 22:44:06 GMT
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I remember Jay Leno had a 1915 or so electric car in his 'garage' and Porsche did a hybrid in the early 20s iirc. There's nothing new about this EV malarky. AFAIK cars were invented as electric vehicles and produced as electric vehicles for a good amount of time before internal combustion proved to be a better option. Quick bit of googlying... 1769 the first steam-powered automobile capable of human transportation was built by Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot. 1808, François Isaac de Rivaz designed the first car powered by an internal combustion engine fueled by hydrogen. 1832-1839 - Scottish inventor Robert Anderson invents the first crude electric carriage powered by non-rechargeable primary cells. 1870 Siegfried Marcus built the first gasoline powered combustion engine.
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Last Edit: Apr 26, 2018 22:47:01 GMT by Deleted
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ChasR
RR Helper
motivation
Posts: 10,195
Club RR Member Number: 170
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I'd forgotten about Hydrogen fuel cells. I wonder if 'the powers that be' are not interested because not enough money can be made off it? Or the car manufacturers are not getting behind it? I remember Jay Leno had a 1915 or so electric car in his 'garage' and Porsche did a hybrid in the early 20s iirc. There's nothing new about this EV malarky. Its a shame that LPG seems to have died a death. Very few stations stock it now, and it was not stupidly priced (taxed). Conversions are still around £1.2k for a 4 cylinder apparently so not stupid. There's your hybrid right there! LPG had its issues too. Many installations were poorly installed, because like most things, good installations take time and thus end up costing a good chunk of money. But to muddy the water you would get some people charging around that much but not doing the quality of work. That's before I get to people making a B-Line for a big name kit like Prins to be fitted. But they'd forget that a big name like that still needs time to be installed correctly. To put it into perspective we've had 3 LPG cars, which we converted ourselves when I worked for a commuting firm; our cars did around 7,000-10,000 miles a month to put things into perspective. Many slagged off our conversions due to using an AEL based system, but back when our cars used to cover alot of miles ours didn't do the miles. I bought one which which was already converted with a cock swinging LandRenzo kit. It was a much better car when we sold it at 280k than the one we bought at 111k. It did teach us a few things however. The other cars were very good for the best part, especially our final conversion, the Mondeo 3.0 V6. The rest of the LPG cars for the company I worked for, including Dealer fitment cars were far from reliable; Coolant leaks were always a big problem on them and the MPG on some was frankly shocking; I remember driving the boss's BMW E39 520i 2.2. On Petrol it got 22MPG? LPG? 11. No, really, it was that bad on LPG! I remember filling that 70 litre tank to the top and still getting over how it hadn't cracked the 200 mile barrier! Our 3.0 Mondeo would smash that barrier on a 56 litre tank! To make matters worse I used to work for a very well renowned gas company, where to keep image 2 of our pool cars were LPG converted from brand new. Did they work well? No chance. It was a lottery as to when you'd pick up the cars and they'd be working! That was again down to an installation error; it needed a DI (DI) system fitting seeing as the car was DI. But again, those systems before you even fit them are huge money, mainly due to the expense of needing to change the injectors (one injector does both petrol and LPG in a DI system; the stock petrol ones can't do that, and you can damage the factory injectors by running a conventional port injection sequential LPG system due to the injectors losing the cooling effect of the petrol cooling the tips down. So why I wonder why LPG didn't take off I can also see why it didn't. High initial cost, poor network from both people who will work on them (I fully get why they won't now) and lack of filling stations as well as a poor fitter skills base.
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Last Edit: Apr 27, 2018 6:35:08 GMT by ChasR
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ChasR
RR Helper
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Posts: 10,195
Club RR Member Number: 170
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While I agree and see alot of your points, I think you do need a good all round trip to truly get a car, and not just a trip purely based in town with tons of pedestrians and cyclists. If you folks drove my old RS Turbo in Amsterdam I can almost guarantee you'd want to kill yourself after the drive. A truly murderous clutch to use, which RetroWarwicK can vouch for, with an equally murderous weight and biting point; Pulling away smoothly was impossible at first and took effort and thought once used to it. 2nd to 3rd required rev-matching for the car not to shake itself and jolt itself to bits; it's to this day the only car I've had do that; Before you call me a wimp, everyone who drove that car was surprised a) why hadn't more stuff broken on it and b) how did I actually live with a clutch that unusable, even on a weeekend car. When on the Wilwoods you also needed that Herculean effort for the clutch to actually stop the bloody thing! And of course, it wouldn't be a Mk3 Escort without heavy steering thrown into the mix. To this day I've not driven a car with controls that testing in town; I suspect it was the main reason why the previous two owners sold that car, including the one who rebuilt it from the ground up! On the open road above 40MPH and headbutting the horizon you forgot about all of those faults. The clutch actually then began to make alot of sense and the handling traits that hindered it at low speed actually worked! It was also surprisingly stable at Autobahn speed! At the shows however and on the forums it looked great and sounded awesome, but I doubt many could have lived with the above. As some can tell, I'm not one for ruling out stuff based on first impressions and initial feeling from 5 minutes behind the wheel, partly because like above, meeting your heroes isn't always as great as it seems. That and I don't think people on here truly confess about the foibles their car have, a little like dan hinted in the Sills thread done by Del regarding costs.
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Last Edit: Apr 27, 2018 10:44:14 GMT by ChasR
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LPG has its place. I had a 214 powered TK Bedford on LPG for a few years in the early '90s and it was great. Got 10 mpg pretty reliably and served us well. LPG being around half the price of petrol at the time helped too.
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ChasR
RR Helper
motivation
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Club RR Member Number: 170
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Apr 27, 2018 10:50:24 GMT
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Without going off topic I'll say LPG did have its place . The issue it seems is while things have become more complex the mechanics willing to do the work don't have an appreciation for it. Those that do aren't in the self-employed game, for the hassle, and in most cases relatively minimal returns it brings, especially when OEMs will give you a bigger salary, more opportunities along with a very strong union backing. For me it was superb; Bar one aforementioned car we had owned 5 LPG cars, most of which have been dead reliable, covering around 700,000 miles between them; the Mondeo I took to LeMans, Blannes and Lille over the years as a testament to it. But as said, every car in the company including dealer converted Insignias/Vectras from new weren't. Almost all of them are scrap now which is saying something. As said, even a large gas company couldn't get the conversions right! They paid top dollar for the installation too, but it's surprising the installation was that flawed! It's put people off them at work anyway! They can be done right as they were for you, but IME they very rarely are. But I'm basing that on my experience that I've seen other people have, and my very cynical approach towards most garages out there.
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Last Edit: Apr 27, 2018 10:54:33 GMT by ChasR
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Apr 27, 2018 12:07:05 GMT
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Another interesting point touched on by Darkspeed is the possibility of ethanol and other similar fuels. While this is a good avenue to go down I'm not sure how long this can last on a large scale. Simply it boils down to food vs. fuel, and with the current upward trend in population food will (hopefully) win every time. Algenol - production is carried out with non food + Drop back on Beef production and there is a lot more food to go around. Just take a look around as you drive about the UK and see just how much land is unproductive - We have no shortage of land to grow crops but what we have is not enough profit in it. Whilst its cheapest from the wells that is where it will come from but eventually the costs will make the alternatives viable - pretty sure the deserts will be the worlds ethanol producers all solar powered with solar ethanol distillation - loads of options on mass production without food stock based production. I think I will have the string backs hung up by then but its interesting to keep track of. I hadn't considered Algae based fuel production, so thank you for reminding me of that! Interestingly I think with all this leaving Europe malarkey we are going to see more and more of those empty fields filled with growing things, but you are correct in that the profit margins are currently incredibly slim. I really like this thread.
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Well, that's won me over. * abandons logic*
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ChasR
RR Helper
motivation
Posts: 10,195
Club RR Member Number: 170
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Apr 27, 2018 12:29:06 GMT
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Likewise. It certainly shows a few perceptions and in some cases experiences with cars with something other than an internal combustion engine.
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Apr 27, 2018 14:27:18 GMT
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I appreciate the need for it, I appreciate the technology, and I appreciate the performance.
Where I struggle, is in the enthusiasm tick box.
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Apr 27, 2018 14:59:56 GMT
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Apr 28, 2018 19:28:38 GMT
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I think it depends on the type of car, and the type of owner.
A 70's roller with an electric engine would be in keeping with the original ethos of the car. Maybe you want the appearance of a retro car, but still be able to keep up with modern traffic and reliable.
I like the way some electric cars sound. Miles better than boy racers with droning fart-cans.
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This guy is selling a 1960 beetle convertible in the US for $15k. The car itself looks pretty good they can be £15k in the UK in this clean a condition if you can find one, and it's had a full leccy conversion. Probably safe to say unless the guy did it himself he'd have lost money on this conversion: www.oldbug.com/dashiell.htmIt won't let me link to the pictures, but I wonder how popular the non-factory EV conversions are on the re-sale market?
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but I wonder how popular the non-factory EV conversions are on the re-sale market? When you see some of the state of some aftermarket radio wiring, I'd wonder as well!
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^ haha, you're right there!
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mk2cossie
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 2,966
Club RR Member Number: 77
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I'd electrify my retro if the cost was right and the batteries don't take up too much room. As long as it would do an easy 200miles on a charge I cant really see much reason to not go down that route Unless some genius comes up with a way for all the conventional petrol engines to run on hydrogen or some eco friendly alternative that emits rainbow dust and unicorn farts
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I would find 200 miles on a full charge too limiting. My petrol car gets close to 500 miles on a tank of fuel. Keen for unicorn fart conversion though if the supply infrastructure can be improved.
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Being serious for a moment. Huh?
The take up of the technology must depend on the location. Whilst fuel has just taken a tax hike here, due to Mr. Duterte spotting an income stream that means he can afford to declare martial law quicker, electricity is eye-wateringly expensive. Continuity of supply is a problem as well. We do like our regular blackouts and it's worse outside of Manila. Nowt like coming down in the morning to find your pride and joy is as flat as it was last night. I suppose you could have a home genny, but that would kind of defeat the object of the exercise, wouldn't it?
Electric bikes are quite popular, although I think that has more to do with the fact that there's no licence/helmet/obey traffic law requirements. I can only remember seeing one hybrid car, a Pious, let alone a full electric vehicle.
There's large swathes of this region (SE Asia) with a dearth of electricity, so it may take a while (read, forever) before it becomes viable.
For now, I'll stick with the V8 and 80 pee a litre.
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No I wouldn't, I like my retros for what they are, modern Evs are great pieces of kit, and id happily drive one, but combining the 2 would take something away from the retro.
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merryck
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 477
Club RR Member Number: 9
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That's a perfectly valid opinion, but there's also the possibility of it creating something even better from the two.
I'd very much like to try and make a small electric roadster out of a Midget.
Rear wheel drive/inline engine so mounting the motor is simple, small and light for efficiency, reasonable boot space for batteries. You should be able to do it without needing an IVA. It would be interesting to see what it ended up like, but the cost is just too prohibitive at the moment. Especially as you could end up with a car that has completely lost it's soul.
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