Honda CRX good for conversion?
 

Read about lots of EVs but not too many Hondas. Would a CRX or a Civic make a good conversion to electric vehicle? Is there a reason they are not preferred? I guess motor rotation has to be a concern. Are they different from the Metros which seem to be popular? Still looking for the right platform. Thanks for all replies.

rese

There is a good handful of CRX conversions out there. Take a look on EV Album.

crx - Google Search

A friend of mine said he was going to convert his Civic after the engine wore out. I asked if he was planning to remove the oil, and he said "Ohhhh. . ." :-) The CRX sounds like a natural to me. Strong chassis, with a small, slippery body, except for it's value as a classic.

I'm scoping out a base for an EV as well, and also looking heavily into using a CRX if I can. They are so stylish. The only problem I'm running into (and it's something I expected) is that as Bob mentioned - they are a classic. EVERYONE wants one to throw an engine swap into one. The one thing HP tuners and FE tuners have in common is the desire for a light body, and the CRX has it with style to boot. I found this site to be very comprehensive and resourceful on this matter. This is a nice informative site about just CRX. CRXs have just about the lightest curb weight out there, especially if you can find an HF (this is an even rarer find as it's the lightest CRX).

Things unmentioned on that EV site:
- '91-'97 corolla/prizm curb weight = 2315lbs.
- The curb weight of metro variants of especially early generations (Gen 1, '83-'88 weighed 1653lbs) rivals the curb weight of the CRX. And don't forget about the Subaru Justy!

Unless you brake the timing belt on a crx or civic the engine will last well over 300,000 miles, metros not much past 200,000, both of them are much much less of course in the hands of a teenager.
the draw back of a CRX is the space for batteries, there is no rear seat to remove, there are no square chunks of space and if you put the batteries in the rear you have to put some in the front or it will make it so rear heavy that it will scare you to death to drive it, I found this while using my crx hf as a work vehicle hauling 200+ pounds of tools in the rear, if I didn't have a passenger it wouldn't handle well because the car is to light, if there was space between the rear axle and the seats that would be different, but there is no space.
Also, why take a solid car that with a perfectly good engine and can get 55mpg in it's stock form and convert it when you could leave it on the road for someone who does drive distances and take a car that only gets 35mpg off the road and convert it.

I was actually kind of thinking of that too looking on CL for the very worst CRXs I could find. I didn't want to buy one with a running engine because I wouldn't want to waste it :p. Got any personal suggestions on cars that DESERVE conversion?

well, if you can find a crx that someone already pulled the engine from and cut the wiring up while trying to make it a race car, then you might be able to get a good price on it and make it an EV, but like I said already, they handle very poorly with weight in the rear so your batteries need to be split with half in the front.

Do you have Daihatsu cars over there? the Charades are around 1300lbs in the four seater variants. Basically any of the Japanese Kei cars would be good candidates.

Geebee - unfortunately, we don't have many lightweight cars. Not the Charade - or kei class. North America used to have small, light cars, but they're mostly gone to their graves by now.

A partial list of potential host cars I considered, from the ForkenSwift thread:

- 89-94 metro: 1650 lbs
- 84-87 civic: 1797 lbs
- 95-99 metro: 1830 lbs
- 94-97 aspire: 2004 lbs

Another consideration: resestop hasn't said what his goals are for the vehicle. If he's looking for something with range (ie. holding a lot of batteries), none of the cars we're talking about is appropriate unless he's going to use something other than lead acid batteries.

Is weight handling simply a matter of using heavier springs? It is VERY easy to source heavy springs for Hondas, maybe not so easy to source heavy springs that aren't lower than stock. 5, 10 even 15 times the spring rate is common in the race community from quality spring mfg's for cheap (300-400 bucks)