31 replies to this topic

[tram mechanic]

I spent this past week in the northwest converting a couple VW Rabbits from gas/diesel to full electric power. The cars were early and mid '80's models and will be used by the owners up here on Guemes Island in the San Juans near Anacortes, WA.
My inquiry to those who cruise the forum: have others here had interests or experiences with EV's personally or via their areas? Has anyone had access to the electric wheelers known as Gorilla vehicles?

[Emax]

tram mechanic, on Nov 10 2007, 08:00 PM, said:

I spent this past week in the northwest converting a couple VW Rabbits from gas/diesel to full electric power. The cars were early and mid '80's models and will be used by the owners up here on Guemes Island in the San Juans near Anacortes, WA.
My inquiry to those who cruise the forum: have others here had interests or experiences with EV's personally or via their areas? Has anyone had access to the electric wheelers known as Gorilla vehicles?

Nope on all counts - but I'm very interested. Why not fill us in on the details of your project?

[Peter]

I have a cabin across the strait on Decatur Island and the community vehicles are golf carts and GEM electric cars made by Chrysler. They are pretty neat and since the roads are small they work really well.

This post has been edited by Skier: 10 November 2007 - 07:27 PM

[tram mechanic]

Many of the islanders on Guemes have GEM cars and the Zenn ev's and I got to see several other conversions during this past week.

The class was through Solar Energy International (SEI) which is based out of Colorado, but they have a representative here in WA who runs courses in things like photovoltaic installation and design, wind energy and solar/thermal. The folks who taught the class were Mike Brown and his wife Shari Prange from Santa Cruz, CA. Their website www.electroauto.com highlights what they do and sell. We essentially did a complete conversion on a 1986 VW Cabriolet and upgraded a 1981 Rabbit.

In each vehicle we installed a 96 volt system running an 8" Advanced DC motor, which is bolted onto the tranny via an adapter plate that the only "specialty" piece of the kit. To get 96 V we installed 16 six volt batteries, in steel racks, 8 up front and 8 aft in a cut out we made in the spare tire well.
Both cars were manual transmissions and you shift through gears just as you do with an ICE(internal combustion engine).

The cars get about 50 to 60 miles on a charge, can go highway speeds and plug into a 110 v outlet for charging.

[tram mechanic]

some pics

Attached File(s)

•  Nov2007_020.JPG (1.46MB)
  Number of downloads: 20
•  NorthwestEVcourse_055.JPG (1.35MB)
  Number of downloads: 23

[EagleAce]

Neat! We use GEMs here and our new valley shuttle buses are hybrid.

[Emax]

tram mechanic, on Nov 10 2007, 09:51 PM, said:

some pics

What type of converter?
Regenerative?
Series-wound motor or shunt?
Recharge time?

OK - I checked out the website. http://www.evadc.org/build_an_ev.html

The writer for this site definitely was not an English major in school.

This post has been edited by Emax: 11 November 2007 - 07:09 AM

[tram mechanic]

Emax, on Nov 11 2007, 08:42 AM, said:

What type of converter?
Regenerative?
Series-wound motor or shunt?
Recharge time?

OK - I checked out the website. <a href="http://www.evadc.org/build_an_ev.html" target="_blank">http://www.evadc.org/build_an_ev.html</a>

The writer for this site definitely was not an English major in school.

check out the electroauto website for more info on the project I did. Mike Brown and Shari Prange, Santa Cruz, CA
to answer your questions:
no inverter, DC motor
No regenerative with a DC system, at least not in this kit. The AC systems do have regen
Series wound motor
~8 to 10 hours recharge time
Jeff

[shoemaniii]

well, this is going to go over like a fart in church, but i gotta ask: what manner of power generation is in use up in your neck of the woods, guemes island. if nuclear, coal, oil or hydo is mentioned back east, you get a look similar to the one you'd get when offering household tap water to someone from beverly hills. (eeeeyew!)

i'm personally fond of power generation via tidal turbines; power is endless and seems the least intrusive unless you are a fish i suppose.
bobp

[tram mechanic]

shoemaniii, on Nov 12 2007, 08:37 PM, said:

well, this is going to go over like a fart in church, but i gotta ask: what manner of power generation is in use up in your neck of the woods, guemes island. if nuclear, coal, oil or hydo is mentioned back east, you get a look similar to the one you'd get when offering household tap water to someone from beverly hills. (eeeeyew!)

i'm personally fond of power generation via tidal turbines; power is endless and seems the least intrusive unless you are a fish i suppose.
bobp

First off, I was just visiting Guemes Island...nice place to visit, but I need to live where there's a bit more sunshine.
Many of the people on the island have stand alone renewable energy systems or grid-inter tie systems where they "sell" back generated power they make but don't use. Several years ago I attended a homebuilt wind generator class up there and we built 2 wind gennies for a couple of the islands residents. One, an 8 foot diameter machine and the other a 12 foot diameter unit. For the rest of the people, the local utility is mostly hydro generated from the great northwest grid.
Tidal turbines are pretty cool. The british have been doing work extensively and the reality is that it's more myth than fact that they are fish blenders. Like the stories of windmills and bird kills...my house cat and my windows kill more birds annually than a wind generator will in it's service life.

[Peter]

Here are the statistics for the Orcas Power and Light Cooperative, whichs supplies most of the power to the islands:

Biomass .13%
Coal 2.32%
Hydro 83.83%
Natural Gas .89%
Nuclear 10.7%
Petroleum .03%
Waste .05%
Wind 2.05%

So nearly all renewable!

[Emax]

shoemaniii, on Nov 12 2007, 07:37 PM, said:

well, this is going to go over like a fart in church, but i gotta ask: what manner of power generation is in use up in your neck of the woods, guemes island. if nuclear, coal, oil or hydo is mentioned back east, you get a look similar to the one you'd get when offering household tap water to someone from beverly hills. (eeeeyew!)

i'm personally fond of power generation via tidal turbines; power is endless and seems the least intrusive unless you are a fish i suppose.
bobp

Bob's right - that "clean" electric-powered car often gets its charge from a dirty power plant. In the long run, I'll bet it's just about aces.

Let's talk about schemes for clean, sustainable power generation. For the moment, lets pass on solar - unless we agree it's practical to cover the entire southwest with photovoltaic cells... and, while you stutter, may I point out that the manufacture of photovoltaic cells is both unhealthy and energy intensive.

[Peter]

Quote

Bob's right - that "clean" electric-powered car often gets its charge from a dirty power plant. In the long run, I'll bet it's just about aces.

I'll bet you on that. Even coal power plants are more efficent at producing energy than burning gas in a car.
Around here, 96% of our electricity comes without any fossil fuels. I know that isn't the case in the rest of the country, but hey we have lots of water.

[shoemaniii]

went by a ford dealer the other day with these little teenie electric cars with banners on them: "Zero Pollution".

i'm not sure the american public has wrapped their hands around this huge energy problem. we need to somehow fully disconnect from the middleast, stop supplying weapons to both sides, and get the f out. end of political whining i promise.

am a huge fan of hyro, seems the least intrusive.
bobp

[SkiBachelor]

However, environmentalists want the dams removed here in Oregon and Washington because they have been known to kill fish and make it very difficult for them to get to their spawning grounds. Dams also prevent sediment from traveling down the river to create a natural ecosystem for our under water allies.

Wind mills are also bad because they can kill birds.

A lot of environmentalists are just weird. The stuff they do is more to get attention than for human good.

[Callao]

SkiBachelor, on Nov 13 2007, 09:07 AM, said:

Wind mills are also bad because they can kill birds.

What we really need nowadays is fleece-covered windmills! That way they won't hurt the birds. An added bonus would be to make the windmills and their fleece coating biodegradable!

[shoemaniii]

the way i figure it, if a bird doesn't have the brains to avoid a 400ft tall, whirling, 3-bladed, whooooshing monster, he needs to be removed from the gene pool. out-of-state funded anti-windmill types successfully stopped a windmill project in vt: seems that bats also run into these things by the hundreds. i am not kidding.

no hydro (fishies)
no nuclear (boom!)
no US oil (smokey/smelly)
no foreign oil (their govt's policies degrade women)
no coal (smokey)
no tidal turbines (again with the fishies)
no soy/corn derivitives (takes food away from babies)
no wind turbines (ice chunks thrown hundreds of feet from whirling blades - i kid you not)
no woodchip power plants (homeless squirrels)

their solution: wear BIG sweaters and walk to work. geez, thanks a pantload

bp

[Emax]

The U.S. government seems to have an abundance of hot air - maybe that could be tapped.
Or how about dead bodies? The average corpse may have a high energy yield when burned... especially obese ones. I have a few candidates in mind for the testing that will be needed.

[Callao]

When I lived in Cranbrook, BC a couple years ago, I met a man who said that Cranbrook was getting more and more windy each year because logging companies were taking trees off of the Canadian Rockies. Another man I met there said that windmills were a bad idea--because it stopped the natural flow of the wind rushing into Alberta as chinooks.

Come on! Let's talk negligible.

[mikest2]

shoemaniii, on Nov 13 2007, 02:57 PM, said:

their solution: wear BIG sweaters and walk to work. geez, thanks a pantload

bp

What work ?............hunter-gatherer or subsistance farmer living in an earth house ? what about the earthworms !