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An electric MGTDr, Old Man Lucas, The Prince of Darkness would be proud. And on top of everything else, NO OIL LEAKS! And, no eshausts or mufflers, make a Harley audio cd and play it as you’re driving, and who would know!
Bill
Bad Bill
Well, he’s certainly addressed the issue of being too light in the front end for good handling…
6.5 hours charging time for a 30 mile range doesn’t sound like much fun, though…
Early FF TDr on 69 VW pan
Slowly coming back from the ashes...KentT is right about the charging time and range. Even extending the range to 40 miles would make a huge difference for me because I’m going to be settling about 15 miles out of town and it would be the ideal vehicle for local errands. Given a breakthrough in battery technology I’d seriously consider it as a project.
Well Tesla recently made all of their info and patents open source. If you could somehow get a hold of one stick one of those batteries in there and get a nice range of 300 miles! 😉
Winter before last, my brother built an electric Yugo, as a winter project. His is a 96vdc system and he gets about 35 miles @ 50 mph.
But, John doesn’t run the batteries all the way down (it shortens their life). And, he lives in mountainous country which puts a lot of stress and gobbles up amp-hrs.
Also, he lives in a colder climate (Catskill mountains of NY). Cold climates shorten battery capacity and life. (Are you going to have heat in the cabin?)John estimates that unless you are willing to spend $4,000, not including the car, fuggetaboudit. (He did all work himself. ALL.)
Here are my thoughts, having spent over 2 years on one of our (battery powered) diesel-electric submarines: until there is a dramatic improvement over lead-acid batteries (talking amp-hrs per dollar cost here), keep your gas engine. Li-ion are cost prohibitive. I doubt you could ever get your money back from a total electric conversion. One last thought: do lots of homework. John is a master electrician and he says: “think,-even about stuff you know. You will likely find out that you knew, but you knew wrong.”
His running, licensed, and insured Total electric Yugo is for sale @ $3,000.? And it even looks good.Yup Yup Yup.
I bought Bridget in 2009 with the idea in mind that I would convert her to electric using the tried and true DC/Lead Acid method that had worked for hippies with bugs for a generation. That’s why I didn’t look too hard at her engine when I got her.I was sure I could make a car I could commute to and from work with each day, 18 miles each way along a relatively (but by no means totally) flat 50-60 mph route.I was sure of this because I had spent substantial time on the DIY electric car forums, where everyone was saying they could do 40 miles easy peasy.Then I started looking closer. I started calculating battery fitment, weight and cost.What I concluded was, best I could hope for, for an additional $8500 outlay, was a car that might just barely get me to and from work.I concluded that the DIY forum people were, in almost every case, overstating their car’s top speed and range by about 20 percent.Fitting batteries=hard. Thought I could get 12 in there if I had two in the back. That’s only 96 volts with the 8-volt model.Range then is about 30 miles total. I could get to work, then about 2/3 of the way home.You need about 120 volts to make the car streetable–15 batteries.The pan would need to be strengthened. Brakes upgraded.Anyway. I ended up doing what I did. I’d still do an electric if I could get LiOn or even LiFePo batteries at reasonable cost. For the past decade or so this technology has been “five years away.”I’ll probably write the same basic post again in five years.edsnova2014-10-06 20:49:22
I ran my ranch (12 miles from power poles) Almost entirely on combined solar and wind.
My daughter needed a car to get to high school and we had a dead Suzuki samurai.
Chassis good, engine toast.
I converted to electric 240 volt 3 phase using a Parajust inverter motor control.
I lucked out and the local mountain phone company was replacing their co-generation batteries. and I was able to get the old batteries just for hauling them off (the utility didn’t want to pay the hazardous disposal fee). They were nickel-metal hydride batteries and I was very lucky to get them.
I didn’t have the cells protected at first and loss some cells to ‘power reversal’.
Got that fixed and the little Samurai buzzed up and down the hill.
My daughter hated it at first until she realized she had the ultimate ‘green’ brag; “I’ve got a solar powered car whadda you got?” (We did charge it from the solar bank, then she plugged it in at school while she was there.)No trees were injured in the making of this message, but some electrons were inconvenienced.
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