Hello Richard, I, too, am UK based but up in Herts, though I was at Plymouth Poly (as was) back in the 80's doing engineering. I did a small van conversion in '08 - since written off - currently ride a Vectrix and am building a EV replica of an Austin Healy 3000.
First thing you need is a copy of 'Build Your Own Electric Vehicle' by Bob Brant which is now in its Third Edition. Ebay do them for about £20. This will tell you as much as you could possibly want to know and is a very useful resource. Cost will (should) be at the forefront of your mind. It is a very difficult issue as it entirely depends on several variables but the principle costs are the donor vehicle (sounds like you have that covered already), the motor and the battery pack (and arguably the battery monitoring/management system BMMS). If you want good range - up to 100 miles at 50 mph, say - you are looking at a good £6k for modern LiFePO4 (lithium iron phosphate), 'prismatic' (quite big - the size and shape of a big Bible 280mm high, 180 wide, 70 thick - and ~ 6kg for 160Ah ones at a nominal 3.2V) cells and for that price you will have to be prepared to import them direct from China. Sounds griefy but isn't as bad as it sounds. There are EU suppliers nowadays but they will charge you - quite a bit - for saving you the hassle (and risk) of importing them yourself. This will give you about 20kWh of energy - much the same as the Leafs, I-Mievs, Zoes etc of this world. I'm not sure you will get 20+kWh of cells in a Minor, Traveler yes, Minor no (unless you sacrifice the back seats). This much battery is about 300mm high x 900mm wide by 600mm deep. So your range (and happily, battery cost) will probably be less. Although I believe the Minor is quite slippery aerodynamically speaking, it weighs quite a bit and this will adversely affect your range if you spend much time speeding up and slowing down - rather than doing a steady speed. The other principle issue energy use-wise is the fact that the faster you go, the more energy the car wastes pushing air out of the way and, worse, the energy needed goes up exponentially with speed ie it is not linear. So doing 70 mph, for example, uses roughly twice the energy that doing 50 mph uses - for any vehicle, BTW, however powered. The motor is, of course, equally important but not as expensive and again, its price will be dictated to a large degree on its performance capability. If you want the same performance as the original Minor's ICE (30HP or so?) then you could get something quite cheap - £500 or so. Traditionally, EV converters have used 'series wound' DC motors as they are relatively cheap, quite efficient, can be obtained relatively easily second hand (fork lifts), robust and easy to pair with a suitable and equally cheap controller (the box that turns the DC battery power into a form of energy the motor can use and control it smoothly and efficiently). A controller for this would be another £500 or so. If, on the other hand you want to show a particularly clean pair of heels to the surronding traffic you will be needing something a bit more powerful - Russ (rustybkts)'s AC motor is good for 150HP, I gather but to get that much power you would need a matching AC controller costing 3 times what the DC one (above) would cost. I don't know what Russ would want for his motor but it would be in the region of £1k to £1.5k (they were going on eBay in the US a couple of years back for around US$2k). An 'off the shelf' AC motor/controller pair will set you back a good £2-3k but again, it depends on your power requirements. Alternatively, an off the shelf DC motor/controller of equal power could be had for somewhat - but not much - less. There is a good BMMS comparison here... http://liionbms.com/php/bms-selector.php You MUST use a BMMS if you go with lithium - some will say you don't but £kkk's is a lot of money to lose if you cook your battey pack due to overcharging it or kill one or more cells over-discharging it. If it's parked in your garage being over-charged, you could lose that too! A good one would be about £6-700 depending on how many cells you have. Lastly, there is some basic engineering that needs to be considered, battery racks, bigger suspension springs perhaps but most importantly (and costly, tho it shouldn't be more than £2-300 or so) is the adapter plate and coupler from the electric motor to the existing gearbox/clutch (if you keep it). You have possibly the biggest UK EV converter not far from you at AVT, Taunton - www.avt.uk.com. They are a bit expensive (IMO) but have much experience and all the bits you will need in one, relatively close-by, place. Have a look at evalbum.com for ideas and inspiration - I see someone in Bristol has already done a Minor - http://www.evalbum.com/4776 Good luck! Martin Winlow [email protected] On 16 Oct 2013, at 16:23, Richard Brown wrote: > Hi Guys > > Totally new to the idea of converting a car to run on electric. I have > started to trawl the internet for resources and how to's but it is > difficult to find anything. I have no idea where to start or what I need to > purchase in terms of a motor. A friend of mine who used to service fork > lift trucks advised me that I need to get an induction motor with an > encoder bearing. But he seem to suggest the cost was majorly prohibitive. > > This instructable doesn't seem to suggest this: > < > http://www.instructables.com/id/Build-your-own-Electric-Car/step3/adapter-plate/ >> > > Anyway, this is my first post and I would love to be able to visit some > sites that might be able to give me some further information and also see > whether it is possible to convert a Minor. > > Thanks for any help. > -- > Richard Brown _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
