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Yeah, you can replace the entire drivetrain every 60,000-100,000miles for the low-low price of $20,000! Such a deal. Ever wonder why Priuses have such a dismal resale value?
Because the cost per kw/h is $1000 to replace all that shizzle.
I expect 200,000 miles out of a SBC...with minimal maintenance....I don't expect to have to REPLACE the entire hyper expensive motive system.
Yeah, you can replace the entire drivetrain every 60,000-100,000miles for the low-low price of $20,000! Such a deal. Ever wonder why Priuses have such a dismal resale value?
Because the cost per kw/h is $1000 to replace all that shizzle.
I expect 200,000 miles out of a SBC...with minimal maintenance....I don't expect to have to REPLACE the entire hyper expensive motive system.
Not into short term thinking.
so, couple things.
batteries last quite a long time. There's a lot of nissan leafs and teslas used for taxi services and they beat the absolute hell out of their packs and haven't really needed to replace them outside of manufacturing defects which isn't really the tech's fault. Tesla charge degradation is like, 10% over a lot of years and miles https://electrek.co/2018/04/14/tesla...radation-data/
what kills lithium batteries is more heat than anything else. Which is why tesla superchargers make the car's cooling system kick up to max, and the battery trays have a ton of active flow coolant piping through them.
even then, TWO new sets of Volt batteries is like 4 grand at a junkyard
prius' have low resale because they're very common and the greenie stigma. They get 40mpg no matter what you do and are essentially unbreakable, their only failure is a few cells in the pack go bad and the pack can be refurbished for like a grand http://www.hybridbatteryswap.com/pro...en-second-pack
labor wise, a pack replacement is comparable to a valve cover gasket, just heavier
There's something else that's specific to conversions though, this battery tech is improving REALLY fast. In 5 years time i suspect i could spend 4 grand on junkyard batteries and get ones with something like 30% higher energy density that can fully charge in under 15 minutes. I'd be happy to drop that cash since it'll be a real nice upgrade
So, continuing research. The location of the stock gas tank is actually pretty fortunate for replace with batteries. It's nice and rectangular of a footprint, it's already hanging out on the frame, and it's relatively accessible underneath for power/coolant/data lines
gas tank hanging off the back end of the frame
doesn't intrude into the trunk area
Also the transmission tunnel is pretty large, i could probably stick another volt battery pack or two down there and put some under-shielding to protect from road debris, and mount it to the stock transmission crossmember location
pretty big transmission tunnel
This'll make it much easier to cram all 8 cells i'll need at a minimum, and possibly some more if i want to crank the voltage up past 400v
Oh, i had no idea that was a thing, that's interesting....
Although there's a bit of a balancing act here, batteries weigh more than gas so if there's too much weight back there, it'll make the weight distribution really goofy, especially since a decent chunk of the nose is dedicated to the radiator and it narrows as it goes forward towards the front bumper. If the car ends up with a 55/45 rear front weight distribution it's going to become pretty sketch to drive.
But, could get lucky and all the engine bay batteries totally balances it out.
Might use that race tank area for batteries but also the charging system, since it'll be super close to the charge plug (gas cap) anyway, need to put that stuff somewhere and it'll keep weight down
another day, another episode of "ugggh i wish i had CAD files!"
. If the car ends up with a 55/45 rear front weight distribution it's going to become pretty sketch to drive.
But, could get lucky and all the engine bay batteries totally balances it out. "
Guys...a little engineering 101 here. IT DOES NOT MATTER if the the weight distribution is 50-50....you are totally disregarding 'polar moment of inertia'.
50/50 depicts the weight essentially on each tire....PMI is the 'dumb-bell effect' of having two large weights on each extreme end of the car and the ability of the car to rotate about it's central axis when called upon. To reference God and Zora and the new C-8...millions upon millions of dollars spent to negate the PMI of a car and move the weight to the CENTER of that particular dumb-bell.
No vitriol.....Going to handle like a truck. You're making a 'tank slapper special'.
Yeah i'd like to avoid that too, hence getting some batteries into the transmission tunnel and towards the back of the engine bay behind the axles, i'll need to do some napkin math on what kinds of weights at what distances from the axles produce what weight distributions
the funky pinched-at-the-front bay geometry helps a little for this, since it sort of forces large bulk mass backwards
Might as well keep up to date with learnings.
I've been asking around about solutions to the range problem. Since i don't want to be forced to fill every crevice with batteries or weigh the car way down in the process, it'll be a game of doing more with less.
to that end, the solutions are either to leverage the existing fast charger network cropping up of CCS chargers that look like this, by installing special charger hardware that can shove MASSIVE voltages and amps into the batteries at a time.
getting that nice 0-80% in 30 minutes number you might have heard
unfortunately CCS involves a ton of active communication with the charge station, so any DIY solution will involve lots of complex firmware canbus magic, there are some diy groups currently designing chargers which can do this, but progress is slow https://www.diyelectriccar.com/forum...ct-198203.html
OR
go with the super crazy, much more complicated solution of building a range extending trailer using a Volt engine and generator setup. https://www.diyelectriccar.com/forum...99#post1038399
which would make the car immune to range anxiety on long trips, just get this little motorcycle trailer sized thing and drive forever at 40mpg, so long as you're consuming less than 45 kilowatts continuous when cruising on the highway, which shouldn't be too hard
Of course, going that route, i'd be very tempted to sculpt the fiberglass cover of the trailer to kind of echo the mako shark lines, that'd be neat.
power is more a property of the motor/inverter/battery combination, not how many batteries, but which ones
for instance tesla batteries are energy dense but not power dense, a lot of watt hours in a small space. But under heavy load you get voltage sag, which you can think of sort of like heat soak on a supercharger. If you get enough batteries together the effect is reduced, but conversions almost always can't use the full compliment of batteries of the original car due to space and weight
chevy volt batteries are not energy dense but they're really power dense. Fewer watt hours per kilogram but your motor can absolutely thrash them for amps and they'll just keep on giving it for as long as you got the pedal down, no power loss.
if i can go 120 miles in a daily driver scenario, i'm happy. Going by other builds, that's going to be around 32kwh of batteries. That's like 600-ish-lbs of Volt cells, little more than an SBC but less than a longblock, not including the gas tank or fuel system weight, but that'll likely be a wash once you add in controllers and charge circuits and stuff.
So i think i can get away with only adding an extra 200lbs to the curb weight, which is pretty minor for a conversion.
i'm hoping the audi packs are both power and energy dense though, then i can use less battery weight for the same power output and range
Oh it's inevitable. I would like to see a good C3 electric conversion when finished.
After all wasn't it Prince Harry who got married in an electric conversion E-Type Jaguar?
Can't get any more classic than that!
Oh it's inevitable. I would like to see a good C3 electric conversion when finished.
After all wasn't it Prince Harry who got married in an electric conversion E-Type Jaguar?
Can't get any more classic than that!
it was a real nice e-type but i believe those conversions are super reversible and certified by jag, meaning they're monstrously expensive, pretty down on power, and have yawn levels of range.
i'd prefer to think of the EC3 as more like a tire slaying torque monster propelled by nuclear power
Start with a 75, should be cheap as most were tossed aside due to failing emissions and low hp, it also still ase the body of a 74 so it looks right as a chrome bumper conversion. Rehabing the stock frame,suspension and brakes might be better spent grafting a C4 suspension in place as its lighter and better handling. There is a user in the C4 secion that has converted his car you may want to google it.
I haven't read all replies to the thread and may be repeating what's already been said. Of course you can make almost anything happen if you want to invest the time and money. But why? If you do this it's no longer a C3 any more than a Ferrari kit car is really a Ferrari.
I don't care how fast Teslas are, to me at least there's just something gratifying about turning a key and hearing that engine fire up, and the whole world of tinkering with ICE cars that you're never going to get from a hopped-up golf cart.
Why not just take a used Tesla / Bolt / etc. or some modern ev with a wheelbase similar to a C3 and just make the body fit.
that'd be almost as much work, unfortunately, since you have to make the body fit but also make all the controls and instrumentation and HVAC work etc.
Hell, depending on how plug and play this becomes a year from now in terms of off the shell motor and battery controllers, your method could actually be much more difficult by comparison
that said, i was considering the model 3 rear subframe as a direct swap in, but it has a track width of only 62" when measured from the outside of the tires, the C3 has 69". A full 7 inches narrower doesn't bode well for getting a whole subframe in there
So, subframe swaps are looking much more feasible the more i look at them.
There's definitely some fabrication necessary, like welding on gussets and drilling/welding mounting points for subframe bolts and shock mounts, but you get an OEM very capable independent rear end complete with good motor mount points for the motor and total suspension geometry done, it's also a pretty flat package, helpful to avoid impacting the body too much, you also preserve all serviceability from the model 3 AND all suspension aftermarket.
initially i thought it was a narrower track but i'm less sure now, i'm not sure if the M3 track width is being measured from the rotors or from the edge of the tires. It might end up being wider than the C3 track which is great, i'm planning to widebody this thing for tons of grip anyway.
120 miles of range might be a pipe dream though. Ballparking like 360 watt hours per mile power draw, which makes sense for an almost 4000lb car with the drag coefficient of a brick [0.443], you get 88 miles out of a 32kw pack, fast charging will be a MUST.
I just want the aftermarket motor controller companies to hurry up with model 3 drive unit software support so i can drop in an evcontrols T-1C and have it just handle that.
I could just do with a P85 rear subframe and motor and use the T-1C right now but....feels like there's just too many downsides
05-08-2019, 10:52 AM
