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Am I mad? Being a car person, I quite obviously crave petrol and V8s and stuff, but I have this nagging urge to explore alternative fuels. I currently drive an LPG'd car, but it's still internal combustion, and I'm intrigued by other methods of propulsion. I should point out now, that I have no more interest in the environment than any other normal person who puts out his empties for recycling on a Wednesday, and I'm well aware that despite low running costs, it'd cost lots to actually perform a conversion of any sort. This would be purely for shats and gaggles Obviously the first things that spring to mind are are read up 'electric cars' and 'electric car conversions' on Wikipedia and the Plasma Boy Datsuns, White Zombie, a balls out street legal electric drag racing beasty and Blue Meanie, the mighty quick street car that he also runs.. However.. On his site , he states that the range of the white one is 'at least 1/4 mile' and the blue one is only 20-30 miles. I reckon it would only be doable from my point of view with a range of over 100 miles. I could struggle on that point. I could always look at a milk float.. Either as something to bumble about town in, or as something to pillage conversion parts from (controllers and stuff?). They're so painfully uncool that I quite like them.. or a Gwiz, purely for pillaging, not at all for driving Or even an electric forklift if I'm only thieving parts from it I'd love to hear people's thoughts on this. I know cost is likely to be quite prohibitive, particularly for batteries, but this isn't a likely to be a quick project whatever I choose to do so it's not really a problem if I can bumble about in my garage putting it together for a year or two.
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Last Edit: Dec 6, 2009 23:03:05 GMT by ben711200
...proper medallion man chest wig motoring.
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Stiff
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'kin 'ell
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oooh, how cool does that look?! Is there any more specific info anywhere about it?
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...proper medallion man chest wig motoring.
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Colonelk
Posted a lot
Posts: 3,740
Club RR Member Number: 83
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Electric car conversionsColonelk
@colonelk
Club Retro Rides Member 83
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Ive looked at this many times chap. TBH I think if you do a lot of it yourself its relatively do-able, the main downfall on a budget is range. Lead-Acid will only get you so far. But all other technologies are expensivo, having said that some people seem to be good at picking up s/h prius batteries. Theres quite a detailed calculator over at www.evconvert.com/tools/evcalc/From playing with that, the way to decent range on a 'cheap' battery pack is starting with the lightest vehicle possible and putting in the biggest battery pack possible. Its just a matter of whether you 600kg base vehicle likes having 500kgs of battery stuck in it LOL But having said that, for me it wouldnt matter in the range was only 30 miles. There are DIY DC PWM motor controllers out there www.paulandsabrinasevstuff.com/evmotorcontrollers.htmlDC seems to be the 'cheap way' having said that I'm pretty sure those drag cars are DC AC controllers and motors seem to be all over the shop for smaller vehicles (converted bicycles) but off the shelf stuff for cars is mega bucks. I will happily be proved wrong Another thought is a series hybrid (like the top gear electric car but done properly) Sorry if I'm telling you stuff you know already You need a small motor, thats enviromentally friendly. Most motorbikes seem to be very bad polluters. Best idea I came up with was a Smart 600cc 3 banger. As for charging, some people seem to use modified alternators to give a much bigger output voltage but I couldnt find much concrete info. Also hours can be lost at ecomodder.com
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Last Edit: Dec 6, 2009 23:29:10 GMT by Colonelk
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That is exactly the sort of stuff I want to hear about. Thank you very much. Why does an engine need to be environmentally friendly though? The diesel electric series hybrid like on top gear is quite a cool idea. Are there any production cars doing that yet? There's the Chevy Volt which is close to release but I can't think of anything other than that.
I'll read this again tomorrow, it's past my bedtime because Screwfix will be expecting me in the office in a few hours..
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...proper medallion man chest wig motoring.
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Why does an engine need to be environmentally friendly though? Because surely anything other than that kind of defeats the point of it? There's a guy who I had a brief conversation with when I picked up my second Dolomite, he was on about dumping one in that... Anyway, he was local to me and seemed to do a lot of these conversions. I'll try and find some details if you like?
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Found this while following some of the links on electric cars....thought you guys n girls would appreciate the uniqueness of this hybrid www.mrsharkey.com/pusher.htm
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Found this while following some of the links on electric cars....thought you guys n girls would appreciate the uniqueness of this hybrid www.mrsharkey.com/pusher.htmI'm liking that. A lot! Can't imagine how it would handle in icey/snowy conditions though! And if you had any sort of accident the car-haters would have you treated like some sort of mass murderer! Also think it would work if you used the shell of a mini (crammed full of a torquey diesel) for the trailer to push something much larger like an electric W123! That'd get some looks!
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--------------------------- 89 Masterace Surf 03 Astra 03 V40 Sport 09 E90 M Sport
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I've been an electric car enthusiast for a very long time, if at all possible my next modern will be electric. It annoys me the way the G-Wiz has been treated by the media. It *is* rather cr@p, but it's not a good representation of what an electric car can be. Yet it's portrayed as the poster child of electric cars. See my sig, Lewis Hamilton and a towing ball. A well converted car that's not too heavy to start with, has an AC motor and lithium ion batteries will have a range significantly over 100 miles, if you pick the base vehicle well that can rise to 200 miles. I'd suggest a look at avt.uk.com/They do parts, kits and ready converted cars. Kits start at about 5 grand, conversion of a donor vehicle complete with lead acid batteries costs about ten grand. With lithium ion batteries that rises to over 15 grand but gives you more than double the range. In particular they do a rather neat 2CV conversion.
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"Jeremy Clarkson, a man we motor enthusiasts need on our side like Lewis Hamilton's F1 car needs a towing ball and a Sprite Musketeer" My motor
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dan
Part of things
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That's about right, they're damn expensive. They also have a 4 to 5 year life built into the cell chemistry, that's why a 4 year old laptop will likely have a duff battery. The flip side is you'll have paid your last fuel bill. But for most of us that just won't add up, I spend about 800 quid a year on diesel for my 1.4tdi Polo for example. It will add up if you are running a city based courier or delivery service though, then you do the miles to make it pay over its lifetime. So you've got 3 choices. (1)use less li-ions, benefit from the lighter weight but have less range (2)Use lead acid, pay less but get used to 50 mile range or (3) lease your battery pack, don't buy it. This is how most of the current projected EVs will work, the Mitsi MiEV for instance. The good news is that the cost will only come down as technology makes them better and bulk manufacture for EVs makes them cheaper. The other good news is that other technologies will come along and replace li-ions. I have my eye on ultra capacitors. Super-efficient, infinite life - and far too heavy at the moment. But give them a decade of development and who knows - they'll be practical for an EV.
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"Jeremy Clarkson, a man we motor enthusiasts need on our side like Lewis Hamilton's F1 car needs a towing ball and a Sprite Musketeer" My motor
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I've looked into this fairly seriously and I'm planning to build an electric hot rod probably as my next project.
Lead acid is still viable technology as far as batteries go and the only issue is weight. You can recharge deep draw (or leisure batteries) about 300 times so if you discharge them completely every day they will need replacing about once a year, which I budgeted about £1000/yr for. NiMh or Li-Ion batteries will be significantly more expensive but hold a bit more charge. I was looking at a motor with about 80KW output which is about 85hp and from 24kwh of batteries (about 250kg) should have a range of about 120-150 miles and able to do motorway speeds.
Even with the battery cost every year it still worked out significantly cheaper to run than a petrol car with 35mpg.
A book I read showed how to use motors to just replace the engine. So you leave the gearbox in place, get an adaptor plate made up and the motor replaces the engine. If you're converting a car to ev it's easy to use a pickup because you can sling all the batteries in the back.
My personal view is a milkfloat isn't such a bad vehicle to start with if you're going to be modifying it. It's already registered as an ev so fewer hoops to jump through with vosa inspections if you body swap it. It's probably quite fast and the range is probably quite long when you're not carrying several tonnes of milk and bottles and you can then shed further weight by not needing as many batteries. If you were to SVA (or whatever you do with ev's) it'll be easier if you've used most of the parts from one vehicle.
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Lead acid is an extremely viable technology, it's moved on a little from your car battery. However you've still got the weight to contend with and the real-world performance will significantly lag behind the projected performance.
Milk floats are IMHO a dead end unless what you want is a milk float. Series wound DC motor, ancient resistive controller, single gear ratio in back axle, difficult battery replacement and charging regime, archaic chassis and suspension, need I continue? You do have a big red 32A 3 phase plug in your garage for the charger, don't you?
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"Jeremy Clarkson, a man we motor enthusiasts need on our side like Lewis Hamilton's F1 car needs a towing ball and a Sprite Musketeer" My motor
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bxer
Part of things
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I used to work in a Bedford / Vauxhall dealers and we were at the cutting edge of technology with selling electric cars, the Enfield , 50 mpc and 50 mphtop... 1973 Also sold LPG back then ( when it was cutting edge ) the owner of the garage ran an MGTF, XK 120 and a 1928 Vauxhall 14 . He's mid 80's now and still drives those cars around, a true gearhead.
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This is a lot more complicated and expensive than I expected.. Much more reading to be done methinks. It's going to take 3 or 4 reads of this thread and the links on it for all of it to soak in ;D
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...proper medallion man chest wig motoring.
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If you want to go the series hybrid route, there are bunch of 750cc Vtwin diesels that are intended as generators, they are compact enough for the diesel bike boys to use them as bike engines, to give arround 80mpg as the sole engine in a diesel bike. If it was running at constant speed instead of being revved up and down like a bike, you should be able to run better than that.
A lot of the homebrews tend to use "a lot" of cells from laptop batteries rewired into bigger power cells. And it is quite normal for them to use 36 and 48 volt motors but over volt them to 72 and 96 volt and spin them at double speed. Then they either run them against a very high ratio rear axle and ride the torque, or run them with a clutchless manual trans. As the "engine" stops and just rolls along as transmission speed when you step off the "throttle" you don't need the clutch, just a slow gearshift.
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Colonelk
Posted a lot
Posts: 3,740
Club RR Member Number: 83
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Electric car conversionsColonelk
@colonelk
Club Retro Rides Member 83
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I concentrated on the Lead acid DC route, because I'm a traveller, and looks like it can be done on a reasonable budget. Cant even imagine paying 13000 for just the batteries. Especially when I'm very nervous about Li-ion battery chemistry (I know they arent ALL bad) Those V-twin diesels sound interesting.... only thing is, do they conform to any emissions regulations at all? As said, no real point going electric if you then put a trabbie engine in the back to charge it up Also check www.evalbum.com/for ideas on peoples setups I love the converted AC mountain bikes tbh! 140mile range and 40+mph was the nuttiest one I saw ;D
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I still don't quite see the emissions problem. I know for some people an electric car should be as green as possible, but for me it would be a fun experiment, a V-twin diesel doing 80mpg sounds green to me, regardless of carbon output (I'll plant a tree to compensate ;D). Thank you very much to all that have contributed to this thread, it would have taken me weeks to sift through the internet to find this stuff otherwise
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...proper medallion man chest wig motoring.
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