|
|
re: that frugal feeling...
21 oct 1998
cara queried:
>how does one convert a car to electricity?
i owned an electric car for about 3 months. a 1964(?) saab conversion,
built as a senior ee project (the saab story) by carl messenger at drexel u,
who drove it to school every day for a year or so. i bought it from carl
for $300. he said it had about the same acceleration as a septa bus.
he used a dc jet engine starter motor, and removed all the gears from
the car, just keeping the clutch, and managed to squeeze about 18 golf-
cart batteries (which needed replacement when i bought the car), under
the hood, in the trunk, and so on. he installed an outlet under the gas
cap flap for charging the car with an extension cord (not included.)
carl gave me a lecture about safety, saying i should wrap all my tools
with electrical tape before touching the car, so as to avoid impressive
arcs and possible battery explosions (which "hardly ever happened.")
there was a cam and a bunch of progressively-activated microswiches
under the gas pedal to put more and more batteries in series up to
110 vdc via some surplus aircraft relays sprinkled all over the car.
carl gave me a bunch of spare relays, and told me the silver inside
them was worth more than their surplus price. he also gave me a supply
of aluminum wire, about 1/8" in diameter, which he said worked pretty
well as protective fusing in series with each relay, when the accelerator
cam bounced or wiggled and the microswitches operated out of sequence
and the relays shorted each other out. there was also a 600 amp circuit
breaker between the front seats. and a bunch of digital thumbwheel
switches over the dashboard that had to be in the correct secret
positions in order to start the car.
my (then) wife and i towed it from carl's house to our house with a rope.
she steered the electric car. about halfway home, i noticed she had begun
to scream. i figured she wasn't used to driving electric cars. after a
while, we stopped, and she explained that the floor and the seat were
collapsing, and she had to hold on to the steering wheel to keep from
falling down onto the road. we finally got it home ("just hold on to
the wheel"), and found it would need an impressive amount of (uni-)body
work, and it sat in our driveway for about 3 months without moving until
i sold it for $300 to a member of the local (c&d) electric car club.
nick
|
|
