Another EV in the garage!

[Ryland]

Took the Green Wedge for a drive today, drove all over town with a friend of mine and was starting up the hill to get home and the speed started to drop, and drop some more, so I turned around and headed back down the hill figuring that another 10 minutes and I could call home to get a tow (tow bar came with the car), so I pulled in the parking lot of my friends motorcycle shop, figuring that he hasn't seen the car yet, and while I was at it I might as well plug it in, an hour later and I was able to cruse up the hill with two of us in the car.
Picked up some gear oil for the rear end, LED's showed up in the mail, and it's pluged in to the watt hour meter while it charges, will then subtract around 550watt hours from that total (appears to be what it draws) and how much I used to go those ten miles.

[cbergeron]

That is a sweet car - with moon hubs too!

More pics please...!

[cbergeron]

550 Watt hours using Coal is much better than Petroleum. It would be even better with Solar...!

Today, we hit $4.19/gal in Atlanta.

[sharp21]

I would love to see more pics of that too! Whats the interior like?
S.

[Ryland]

The inside of the Wedge is nearly perfect, has mock bucket seats in black, the carpet is also in good shape, the dash has some fading of the wood grain, and the sticker around the foreword/reverse switch is scuffed from use, but other then that it's in great shape, only gauges that work are the speedometer, and the amp gauge on the charger, but all of the dash lights do work.

Took it to a car show today, bitterly cold but still fun, won 1st place in the "special interest" category, was hoping for best vehicle at the show, but some big old American car got that one, I also tried the "slow race" where you see how slow you can travel about 30' without coming to a stop or using the brakes, but someone with a truck that had a high low gear box won, had a number of people with fast shinny cars drooling over it, and alot of people asking if I could tell them were to get one, basically told them that they just needed to look long and hard, and then hand over fist fulls of money, printing out some original sales info helped cut down on the dull questions as it got everyone up to speed as to what it was and everyone seemed to enjoy seeing something that non of them had seen before, or heard of before, or even dreamed of.
I also was encouraged to enter in a car show in a month that is about 25 miles away, was told that if I drive there and needed to charge at the show that an outlet could be provided.

[MetroMPG]

Congrats on your show win. That's great.

[MetroMPG]

Originally Posted by Ryland

starting up the hill to get home and the speed started to drop, and drop some more

PS - get a volt meter on the weakest battery in the pack (or on the whole pack - less accurate though). Don't want to accidentally murder a floody reversing a cell.

[Ryland]

Today I checked the axle gear oil, still clear and golden, leveled the car out on jack stands and added the last quart of gear oil (around two and a half total), I also adjusted the front brakes so they hardly drag at all, cleaned the outer of the front wheel bearings on both sides, and greased them with synthetic grease, now all 4 wheels spin easier, top speed has gone up from 30mph to nearly 35mph!
I had been using a small charger and charging the batteries in pairs to make sure they were all equal, but today I used the on board charger that I'm still a bit wary of, it doesn't seem to turn it's self off and yesterday the "charging" light died, (bulb still good) so you have to listen for the humm to see if it's really on, thinking of buying a pair of on board boat battery chargers, each is set up to do 2 12v batteries at a time, figure with two of those I can charge all 48v worth, and it has a de-sulphation mode as well as a trickle charge that comes on as they reach the top, as the current on board charger is pretty crude... a transformer and two diodes... (no case).
This evening I had it at a friends house and had it parked in front of her house where we could see it from inside, it was fun to see people walk by and give inquisitive looks, it almost became a game to see if they would stop walking! plugged it in there, and got permission to leave a cord in a convenient location at another friends house as well.

[Compaq888]

all this talk of an electric "beater" makes me want to get one too...

[Ryland]

Originally Posted by Compaq888

all this talk of an electric "beater" makes me want to get one too...

I don't have the "beater" running yet, this one that I have running is in better shape then any other comuti-car I've seen sell on Ebay in the last year.

Originally Posted by cbergeron

550 Watt hours using Coal is much better than Petroleum. It would be even better with Solar...!

You mean like this?



It was sunny enough the other day that I was charging of those panels, then the wind picked up... at that point I didn't have to worry about running out of electricity.

My range has been getting better and better, hit 40+mph going down a hill yesterday and the speedometer cable that has been starting to whine at 15mph suddenly stopped, at first I thought something broke, then realized that the quietness was the vehicle working properly, still need a little more lube in the cable as it still whines above 25mph at times.

On a sadder note, my insurance on the comuti-car got canceled because the under-writers never heard of it befor and don't know how to rate it, and apparently the other insurance carriers "don't insure electric cars", so next time I have a day off I need to make more phone calls, and maybe try to get these policies in writing so I can personally look them over.