Someone tells me his landlord (electronics teacher) has a CitiCar, and wonders what kind of motor he should watch for to do his own EV conversion...
Sounds like you've got the ideal situation with your landlord being an electronics teacher.
I learned how to advance the brushes to change a motor from electrically retarded to electrically advanced, but I'm having trouble doing the same thing to myself.
Ask your landlord if he has his car listed in the EV Album (
http://evalbum.com)
The type of motor you should watch for should be of the DC variety. I suspect the kind you threw out were AC motors. Some people do AC conversions, but the parts aren't as common and so tend to be a lot more money. Also the system voltages tend to be really hgh, which makes for some pretty spendy battery packs.
Just as a rough idea, the physical size of DC motor people most often use in small car conversions are around 6.5-8 inches diameter, about 12-16 inches long, and in the neighbourhood of 100 lbs.
Find yourself a forklift graveyard, or an existing conversion that someone started but didn't finish, or finished but eventually lost interest in (these will be cheap and have dead batteries).
One of the first things you need to do is ask what the minimum requirements of your conversion are: how far & how fast? The response to that is pretty much proportional to "how much"