Tires and wheels, part 1

I have been wanting to get some different wheels and tires for the EV. Something more distinctive. I scored these beauties off of craigslist. Lightly used. Only two actually match in terms of brand and model, but they are all the same size and all have nearly full tread. Did I mention they were cheap? Did I mention I am cheap? It appears they have been stored in a mud pit, perhaps that keeps the damaging sun and ozone from degrading them. Yes, sun and ozone kill tires. And crazy driving does too. So does poor inflation, bad alignment, and worn suspension parts. But I digress. They are p195-70-r14 size. The narrowest, tallest, cheapest I could find. These are just sort of temporary tires, eventually I would like to step up to real low-rolling-resistance (LLR) tires. Decreasing rolling resistance increases mileage (range) in an EV. For now, I want to see if these junky tires work well enough to use...
...these wheels:

I got these wheels at a car swap meet a couple of years ago for the original EV project. Also cheap. These are American Racing model 200S. I HATED these when they were in style, late '60's-early '70's. We derisively called them "daisy wheels" due to the distinctive curved shape of the spokes. In actual fact, this style was used on some of the most badass drag cars of the era. I have a newfound appreciation for them and want a set on the EV. They are still available new, but they're too pricey for me.

These are only 14" diameter (I would have preferred 15's), but being aluminum, they are nice and light. Can I make these diamonds in the rough shine again?

A slight detour

I have spent a lot of time doing planning and research on the EV project this week, but have done nothing physical. So there is little to report, and less to show.

I have done a lot of reading on internet message boards dedicated to EVs of all types. Some people have converted their riding mowers to electric. I am really interested in this. I had a riding mower for about 11 years that I really liked. Unfortunately, it's motor blew up about a year ago. Like a lot of things, I rolled it into the backyard and saved it anyway. My brother gave me a free working mower to replace it, it just needed a new battery (thank you KK!). So now I am planning to do an EV conversion on this old mower. Many people do mower conversions as a stepping stone to a full-size vehicle conversion. Of course, I already have that, so this would probably be a concurrent project.

In a way, I am now glad that the motor on my trusty old mower blew. The carb and starter on this mower always gave me problems. The carb would clog about weekly, requiring removal, cleaning, and reinstallation. The starter, even with a charged battery, would barely crank the motor to life. And forget about shutting it off mid-mow; once you did this, it would not restart when hot. So you had to do the entire lawn at once, or you'd be stuck with a half-done lawn till the next day.

I dragged the mower into the garage, and promptly removed the blown engine and the gas tank. the motor is resting upside down in the photo; I have to remove the drive pulleys for reuse. I don't think I'll get past cleaning up the motor chassis for now, but hopefully we'll get to this someday.

Taking inventory and making the project way easier.

I made a major breakthrough in thinking this week that will really move the project along, at the cost of another compromise. I was going to disassemble the truck and put all of the parts onto a 2-wheel drive S10 chassis I still have from my earlier EV project. The existing S10 you see here is built upon a 4x4 chassis and is not optimum for the project. However, after a little inspection of the existing EV chassis, I have determined that it really is in decent shape. Also, this EV reportedly had a 30-mile range. I was only hoping for 20+ miles, so 30 would be fantastic. I don't know if the chassis swap would net me more than a few percent in increased efficiency so it's probably not worth the effort. I had estimated 2 full days for the chassis swap, in reality I probably saved like 2 months of work! So that just got way easier.

I'll show you around the truck as is:

This is the interior. Spartan. Just needs a little cleaning up and refurbishing. Has manual crank windows, just like I like. Rubber floor mat instead of carpeting. I can always make it fancier later.
Here's underhood. This is all the electrical gizmos where the gas motor, or ICE (internal combustion engine, in EV'er lingo) used to be. The big white panel is the cover for 4 batteries that are where the radiator used to be. Don't need a radiator now.

The main item you see here, the finned box on the lower left, is called the controller. The controller sends the appropriate amount of power from the battery pack to the motor, depending upon throttle position. Right now this big brown component panel is above the motor.

Kind of tough to see, but the gray thing with the cooling holes in it is the electric motor itself. It occupies roughly the same space the ICE did. I want to make it possible to see it easier. It's not going to be cool to tell someone this is an electric car, and then tell them they can't see the electric motor because there's other stuff in the way.

The bed of the truck lifts up like so. But not for unloading cargo.

Under the bed are batteries. Loads and loads of batteries. I took the plastic covers off the racks to show you all these. These battery racks are located low in the chassis to help keep the center of gravity low. This keeps the vehicle from being unstable, especially in turns. The pink material is insulating foam board. Batteries lose a great deal of power as they get cold, like in the winter. Yes, they are all dead. I not only have to replace them, I will be adding 4 more. The truck now has 20 6-volt batteries for 120 volts. I'm going to 24 6-volters for 144 volts. More power and operating range.

Yes, there is body work to do. I know it looks bad, but I can fix this. I want to repaint the truck a bold green, because it's green. Nothing makes a vehicle look like a million bucks more than new paint. I humbly estimate one month to do the bodywork and paint.

All right, even though I didn't really do anything this week, I feel like I made a lot of progress just by doing some planning. Proper planning prevents poor performance.
And I suppose the project has now changed from the exciting building something to the relatively unambitious just-refurbishing-a-done-product.

So if you're scoring at home:

1. It will not be a vintage vehicle EV.

2. I will not really be building anything new.

3. I will not be optimizing every aspect of the vehicle for absolute best performance.

What we will have, is a functioning EV in a relatively short time. Hopefully. After all, we want to get to the motorcycle EV, the dragster EV, and the custom built roadster EV, don't we?

Take 2

Hi friends! I am back on the Electric Vehicle project in a big way. I decided to start a fresh blog to accompany my fresh start. I will not go into a detailled history of this project, but I will revisit the past as required to explain the present. I have found that I cannot suppress my passion for building an EV. I still don't really have the funding I need, but I have decided that I do not want to let that keep me from doing something, anything, to move forward. I have decided to make some major concessions from my original, elaborate, show-stopping, way-cool EV plan. The EV will hopefully still be pretty cool, though.

People have kindly told me in the past that they enjoyed my previous blog, and I know how much I enjoy reading something interesting and well-written, so I'm happy to do this again. I have promised myself to do at least one blog post per week, so this will be motivation to accomplish something on this project each week to then blog about.

The big news, and a major step forward, is the acquisition of a used EV! I made a down payment to EV-Steve for his 1985 Chevy S10, and he let me pick it up. I have known EV-Steve for a long time now. He is the only one I know that owned an EV, and I have done some mechanical repairs on it in the past. This is an actual battery and electric motor powered truck. It comes with all the major parts I will need.

I don't want to use up all my good info on the first post, so I'll let some photos do the talking.

It don't look so special, just an ol' S10, right? Bye for now, JK