Looks like my poor mans Hybrid just might have merit!

[Nerys]

Nope Limiting the project to my Voyager on purpose. Many reasons. I already have it. I like it. I Fit well and my body is not wrecked during the 110 mile round trip commute. (I am over 6'3")

IE I like my van and I already have my van. IE I do not have to BUY another car. "adding" another $500 is well beyond my means. Its going to be hard enough for me to scrounge up the $400-$500 I need now!

Also I want this to work on the heavier car! (if it works on this it will work on the other cars as well!)

My objective is just to prove it works and get others to do the same thing. My "ultimate" would make me happier than a pig in you know what would be if I got a significant gain. say 45-50mpg

Then you guys repeated my experiment and ALSO got 45+mpg

We would then have some serious teeth with which to pose some serious question to toyota and the other car makers.

If us schlubs can do that for a few hundred dollars in junkyard parts why is it that you can not manage better with your millions of dollars and $24,000 cars!

THAT would be the ultimate outcome!

[dremd]

Originally Posted by Nerys

I see even 50 and 60hp electric motors for under $500 !! thats a lot of money More than I have but maybe in a few months I could scrounge it up.

Where from?

I'm looking at at 49 peak + 18 continuous motor for a similar pipe dream/ not going to happen anytime soon project on my golf . . ..

[Nerys]

Ebay. I just typed in electric motor and starts adding hp's to it 30hp 40hp etc..

[nickblair]

as far as the clutch goes, if you go to an agri-supply they should have them... they are more often refered to as a "sprag clutch" I think they run about $12

I'm very interested in this, I remember reading some stuff about the compressed nitrogen regenerative braking systems that eaton was making for some experimental for trucks a few years back and their results(30% increase in city mpg I believe)I look at it about the same way - any help in acceleration will yield nice results I think

[Njay]

I know of a Open project with the similar goal of turning normal vehicles into hybrids: http://myownhybrid.wordpress.com .
One of the major problems was to find who would sell only a pair of in-wheel electric motors by an affordable price; since the answer was noone (not even close), we had to go the path of designing such motors.

[JV-Tuga]

The exact same idea occurred to me a while back and I posted a couple of days ago asking about feasibility. Didn't get any informative answers, though, so I'm happy to find this thread.

The way I conceived it it would work like this:

the driver would have a lever, like the ones on jets to increase power to the motor, set it to neutral (i.e., no power, no drag) or use it to brake/slow down while coasting, instead of the normal breaks or, if moved further that way, to regen.

The "dead man switch" would be on the actual brake pedal and immediately set the motor to neutral or even regen, based on pressure applied.

The only problem I foresee with a setup like this is if the car has ABS.

[nickleinonen]

i don't think the bicycle overrunning clutch would work. i have broken a few on various bicycles i have had.. depending the electric motor used, you could easily have over 1000lbs/ft of torque on a motor that is less than 20hp..

a farm style sprag clutch for a pto or 3pt hitch could work well..

Originally Posted by IndyIan

You might get away with using 1 or 2 good bicycle free wheels, my rough calcs say one deals with 400ft/lbs of torque quite well. Me at 220lb mashing down one pedal while pulling up on the bars must be around 400lbs of force, doubled by the crank arm diameter vs the sprocket diameter into an equal rear sprocket diameter, heck maybe its 800 ft/lbs but that sounds a bit high.

Do all of your torque multiplication after the freewheel and you should be ok. They might not like high rpm though, bike wheels are big and don't see 50mph very often. If you can't find a heavy duty free wheel right away these might be good enough for proof of concept anyways.

Cool idea!
Ian

[COMP]

Originally Posted by nickleinonen

i don't think the bicycle overrunning clutch would work. i have broken a few on various bicycles i have had.. depending the electric motor used, you could easily have over 1000lbs/ft of torque on a motor that is less than 20hp..

a farm style sprag clutch for a pto or 3pt hitch could work well..

a auto-trans have one-way spags in them

[elhigh]

I always thought it might be cool to mount a motor under the bed of the truck to run a toothed belt to the driveshaft, and a super heavy duty AC clutch to take the motor load off when running straight ICE.

[nickleinonen]

Originally Posted by COMP

a auto-trans have one-way spags in them

so do the turbochargers on the emd diesel engines i work on.. they are 2 cycle diesels, and the turbo is gear driven through the clutch to act as a blower for scavanging until the drive pressure/heat is enough to overcome the clutch then it acts as a regular turbocharger..


the sprag is a great idea for this idea, but it needs to be sized properly to be strong enough.

I always thought it might be cool to mount a motor under the bed of the truck to run a toothed belt to the driveshaft, and a super heavy duty AC clutch to take the motor load off when running straight ICE.

i have had similar dreams.. another idea could be having a transfer case on a 2wd truck and having the electric motor mounted to where the front driveshaft would be. pop the trans in neutral and transfer case into 4x4 and you could power the rear axle through the transfer case.

another idea is in prototyping now by variable torque motors.. a driveshaft mounted electric motor assist for the ICE.. very neat idea but going to be expensive i think

http://www.variabletorquemotors.com/...%20Writeup.pdf