Sup Frank? I'm kind of in the same boat as you.
And I also built a hybrid for shats and gaggles.
I felt it was an excellent power increase method, but the mileage just wasn't worth it. Seriously, the car was QUICK off the line with an extra 85 ft lb of torque. Even with the added weight of the batteries. But..
On a good day,
if traffic was nice, and I controlled
both throttles with surgical skill.. I would see 35~38 mpg. But this was with
heavy electric subsidization which I never got around to even metering since my Kill-A-Watt was stolen. 35~38 mpg is roughly what I get on the highway on a good day as well. So that seems to be my upper limit on the car (still shooting for 40 one of these days, too stupid to give up)
But the batteries were very heavy, I had a range of only a few miles before I saw degradation of power, and the system got very hot under the hood and would govern itself to less power.
Plus, with all the idling and fiddling and adjusting and idling and tinkering and idling my tank average actually reported slightly less than average mileage. It was a fun project, but I've since removed the components from the car and am rebuilding it into something else (can't decide yet, too busy with grad school.) I'm also open to selling it, but have had no acceptable offers on it.
So I'll just be sitting on some really expensive parts for the time being. And grumbling about my lame averages as I use the car only for short, cold, snowy, city trips now.
I'd still love to see more about this project though, but the website is hard to navigate and I see no actual pictures of work being done. Which to me, is the most interesting aspect of such a project.
