EV build begins at last

The mechanics have been rather busy of late and the EV build has been pushed back a few weeks, however they collected the engine from me yesterday (16th April) and have begun the build proper today (17th) by coincidence I bumped into my mechanic this morning in the petrol station and he was in the process of taking the measurements of the engine to motor coupling plate over to the machine shop for the mechanist to mill up the coupling plate and splined collar, Brent has assured me that this should only take a couple of days to manufacture (on a CAD CAM mill) and they will be fitting the motor to the gearbox and fitting this back into the car, I am hoping that this will all be done by the end of this week.

Also I have been speaking with a friend of mine who has some experience of TIG welding and he has agreed to have a go at making up the battery boxes from a couple of 8 x 4 sheets of 3mm thick aluminum that I have had kicking around for years, we should be able to cut out all the Battery Box parts and clean them up a bit ready for  welding , I am also going to get a box made up for the charger (which I am still building) from the same sheets of aluminum.

So all in all things are starting to move in the right direction, I hope that the car will be back with me (motor & gearbox fitted) by the end of this week (optimistic in my opinion) so that I can get Steve (my EV specialist) to have a looksee at where we are going to put the rest of the bits (Charger/Battery boxes/Soliton Jr etc).

Exiting times!

Kostov K9 220v Motor still in box and Soliton Jr fresh out the box

Engine & Ancillaries stripped

My partner has christened the EV “Electro Beat”, the Donor car went in on the 11th of Dec for the engine removal, unfortunately it looks like I may have to keep the gearbox due to space & cost issues, this is not definite yet as we may be able to mod the gearbox so as we are just using the gearbox casement which is useful as it has all the engine mounts connected to it so we would not have to make potentially expensive custom engine mountings.

Worst case is we keep the gearbox & gears complete and I would just have to use the 4th& 5th gears, this is a tried and tested method and although it is a simple low cost solution it will result in additional noise from the gearbox (whir, which would normally be covered by the loud engine noise) and the loss of some torque through the gearbox as friction & noise.

My mechanic (Brent) took the beat for a test drive before he started the strip down and laughed at just how underpowered it was, after all this little car only developed 63BHP new and looking at a more recent dyno readout that was supplied with the car (handy!) this one was nearer 57BHP, my limited experience of driving this great little car (picking it up) was similar in it seemed to make a hell of a lot of noise for very little grunt. But all the same a great fun car to drive and being a Honda it has rock solid build quality.

Anyway the motor is due to be ordered at the end of December so I should be getting the joiner plate and a coupling made up once this has arrived (Probably around mid Feb).

I will put the engine & ancillaries up for sale after the motor is fitted as I may need the flywheel from the engine side to make the coupling to the motor easier.

If it turns out I don't need the gears in the gearbox I may also sell these as they seem to fetch a price secondhand as they are very difficult parts to come by if you need one.

At the mechanics just before stripdown

 

Exhaust removed

 

 

 Engine & Cooling system out

 

 

Donor vehicle acquired

I have decided that due to the ridiculous price of petrol that I am going to build an EV “Electric Vehicle”
after searching on the subject I discovered that it just so happens that a serious EV builder/researcher lives just around the corner from me and after contacting him it seems that I may be in luck, he has the expertise and experience to make this project not only work but work well.On Sunday I bought my donor vehicle a 1992 Honda Beat, this sweet little sports car has a  3 cylinder engine and should develop around 67BHP in a 760KG vehicle (that's the same curb weight as a Nissan Micra) these vehicles seem to have an online following but as far as I can tell nobody has yet done an EV of one.There does seem to be a few conversions/upgrades online but they all seem to be petrol based power vehicles either using  a VTEC Engine or a Hayabusa motorcycle engine derivatives, these blog’s/websites should help with the strip down/engine removal.I have joined the unofficial Honda Beat club’s website and will probably be posting on there as well as this blog or linking from there to this blog at least.The donor car cost £1050 ( I hope to reclaim part of this by selling the engine and other unneeded parts on eBay.After speaking to Steve www.Jozztec.com it seems that the conversion will cost around £7000 (update as of Feb 2013 this is likely to be nearer 10K) (yikes) and that the batteries may only last a couple of years before I start to see some performance loss, considering the current cost of fuel in the UK this roughly equates to the amount of money I would spend on fuel over the 2 years on my current vehicle (not the Honda which is considerably better in terms of petrol consumption) so I cannot say that this will necessarily save me money in the long run but if you don't take risk’s…I think that Steve’s cost estimates are based on my initial request for a performance car, I may need to revise my dreams into a more realistic build in the first instance as I am slightly worried that we may have over specified the motor (don't want to blow the rear diff)I will be removing  the engine and gearbox completely and the motor will be directly connected to the rear differential.I did want to do this using one of Cedric Lynch’s great little Agni motors but after speaking with Steve he reckons that they are just not powerful enough (yet, Steve is working on this as he works for Agni motors)I have seen one running in a fiat 500 (500KG, hence the name) and this seemed to go like a rocket, but Steve also warned of constant brush maintenance which would not be good, I want/need to run this car every day on a round trip of around 25 miles with the option of doing around double that, I also need run it all year summer and winter so I will need to have some sort of battery heaters for when it’s really cold, all of this perfectly feasible with current technology.