Quote:
Originally Posted by .Cd
So minus the purchase of the car, how much would you say that you have invested in the car right now dollar wise ?
How many man hours ?
Could a single person duplicate most of what you have done in their garage, or did you rely on lots of friends and outside automotive shops ?
I'm assuming that you have worked on cars all of your life, and know a lot about mechanics. You also seem smarter than average.
Could your average person off the street attempt a project such as this ?
Thanks for sharing your project with us. It is very inspiring.
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I've got about $6k in total invested, it will be a little over $7k with the generator.
Hours....hmmm....
I can't estimate design hours, I've been thinking about the conversion for years, and I drift off thinking about the best way to build parts, the next steps, etc on a daily basis, so there are hundreds of mental hours invested.
Probably 10 hours of physical work per major component. The transmission adapter plate (lots of hours drilling holes, measuring, measuring again, conceptualizing the finished product to make sure its all going to fit together when done), the battery racks, vehicle prep, electrical, and drivetrain assembly probably has 50-100 hours invested. Component selection and purchase involved probably hundreds of hours scouring the web for the best deals, staying up late to snipe ebay auctions (lots of very good deals this way).
You could most definitely accomplish a project like this entirely with a garage and plenty of free time. The only component I outsourced was the transmission to motor coupler. You could even do that yourself, but I do not trust my welding on such a critical piece, nor do trust that I could achieve the center-to-center tolerances required for long bearing life. I don't even have an impressive tool collection, most of what I use is cheap chinese stuff from harbor freight. All the welding was done using 2 of the traction pack batteries wired to an electrode holder and ground clamp (I wouldn't recommend this, much too hot an arc and no current control...invest in a good welder). My 10 year old cheap drillpress, sawzall, and angle grinder are responsible for 95% of what you see.
I'm actually not familiar with cars much at all; I understand how they work fundamentally, but that is about it. I just changed my own oil for the first time last weekend. I have, however, been obsessed with electricity since I was an infant. I actually had a length of wire I carried everywhere. I'd buy motors out of surplus catalogs with my allowance money just to watch them spin. Even still, most of this is very new to me. The biggest motor I'd ever played with could fit in my hand, and every circuit I've ever built was a tangle of alligator clips. The idea of pumping enough power to light a whole block through this contraption
I built is still majorly spooky. Its also the most fun I've ever had.
Anybody off the street could accomplish this as long as they believed they could. Just start with the basics; amps, volts, how does a battery work, etc and go from there. There isn't anything in this car that you wont find cracking open a $20 RC toy, just way bigger. The biggest obstacle is pouring thousands of dollars into a project when most people will tell you it wont work, can't work, don't bother. How are you going to do something that GM couldn't? I've had people tell me "you're not an engineer". As if that alone was proof that its not possible. My girlfriend expressed her skepticism that it would ever move constantly. My mom laughed it off, and then changed her tone to "you're going to kill yourself" as it became clear I was actually going to do it.
A word of advice to anyone trying anything like this: visualize. You've got to imagine the end product, then work backwards. You're driving your car with an electric motor. How is it connected to the wheels? How is it mounted to the car? It can be easy to overlook important details when you're only thinking about the big picture. Advice #2; sketch. Draw it. Draw every detail. Remember welds, bolts, wires. It doesn't have to look perfect, it just needs to include every feature. Its amazing how easy it is to design a battery rack that doesn't leave room for the battery cables, mounting bolts, etc.