Quote:
Originally Posted by pete c
Good luck with it, Chris. Show us that an englishman can actually make a functional auto electric system (insert obligatory Lucas joke here).
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lmao
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Well my car was designed and built in England so that's a start.
The car is a 1998 Rover 218 iS weighing 1032kg, 1.8 litre naturally aspirated K-Series engine, Aluminium head and block with Twin Overhead Cams.
Manual gearbox with 5 forward gears and one reverse gear so pretty standard. 4 spark plugs, multipoint fuel injection controlled by the Rover MEMS1.9 engine management system, which is OBDI.
The car has power asisted steering (belt driven), alternator belt driven obviously, DC fan which hardly ever kicks in, and no air conditioning, although there is an air-con version of it.
Standard highway rating: 48.4mpg, city rating: 27mpg. My current best is 57.8mpg with an average speed of around 34mph.
Drag coefficient: 0.330cd
Frontal Area: 2.00 square metres
Cda: 0.66
Current gearing puts the engine speed at 55mph in 5th at 2488rpm
Here's the car:
Engine bay:
My cone air filter:
My grille block test:
Here's my DIY arduino based fuel monitor and MPG calculator:
Thanks all for the current ideas... I'm liking the mild hybrid idea best, the idea of a 5th wheel would be a little too rediculous looking for me. I want to preserve the looks of the car where possible as I have future design plans for it to modernise it a bit. If I was absolutely dedicated to MPG to the extent I'd make such huge alterations I'd just change cars to something more economical
. Even if the other options are more complex... I'd rather go that way. I'm aiming for a more professional OEM outside appearance really.
So if I were to attach an electric motor to the the engine, I could easily mount it where the power steering goes... but would it be able to assist the engine and be belt driven? If so, I'd be interested in this idea as I was thinking of converting the power steering to an electrical pump anyway as I could turn it on/off as I wanted.