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Old 03-10-2013, 10:28 PM   #3 (permalink)
Ryland
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Location: Western Wisconsin
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honda cb125 - '74 Honda CB 125 S1
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Chances are that the all electric drive with the diesel pusher or diesel trailer generator is going to be your better option, unless you tend to drive long distances most of the time, then you'd want to keep the diesel engine in the car.
I would not however idle the diesel engine, I'd size the battery pack to give you the around town range you want and install electric power steering so the diesel engine is off when you have it in electric mode, then connect your pot box for your electric motor speed controller to your regular foot throttle and either a switch that cuts the main contactor when the engine is running or a manual switch on the dash, the manual option would allow you to use the electric drive to boost mileage on long trips by supplementing power to drive the car, at this point I'd add a trim knob on the dash so you could have a little electric boost or a lot, depending on how far you were driving, over time you'd figure out how much boost from the electric drive you wanted to add to say drive 50 miles or 100 miles with the goal of ending your trip with a near dead electric drive battery.
Other option of course and if you didn't do long cross country drives this would work great with the electric boost option, remove the alternator from the diesel engine all together, have all electronics run off the electric drive pack that gets plugged in, this will take load off the diesel and give you better fuel mileage, only thing is, if you have the electric boost option you need to size the battery pack for the longest drive you plan to make running lights and everything, not often an issue, but I'd have the low voltage cut out on the drive pack cut out the main contactor when you still have enough battery capacity left to run your lights for say 2 hours.
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