Possible Citicar upgrade?

[Hogwit]

But it will work, correct? That's what I am going for...

[Ryland]

Yes, it will work, you will have decent performance for the first 5 minutes of hard driving then it will start acting like the batteries are going dead, good for extending your range, not good for climbing hills or stop and going driving if there is anyone behind you.

[Hogwit]

I have decided on something, after the kit car sells, I will buy a 4865 controller, then a "real" car with he remainder. Whatever I still have (including from work this Summer) will first go to registering/insuring the "real" car, then if I have much left I'll register+insure the citicar. (Sorry but the ev will come last due to impracticality). I don't know what car I will buy or how much I will spend on it so I'll continue with the list, then depending on battery condition, they may come next, or last; 20 useable miles is my minimum need from the ev when using it though. After that I still want solar, so the panels go up for ±$500.

Also relatively cheap, so just added in there somewhere, LED lights, and a small stereo. The list will go on almost endlessly, so I'll stop there as once you get to adding solar you are just having fun with it all, but I hope one day to have lithium in it.

[Hogwit]

I guess I lied to you guys and myself... lol
Bought the Citicar and registered/insured it...I'm looking at what would be required for a motor upgrade...maybe even an AC motor? Anyone have any suggestions? I'm thinking to myself, screw the "real" car...my father already has some I could use. So there is a really cool car for $2,000 that I want, but I also want to upgrade the Citicar. Going up some hills around here, it slowed down to around 15mph of so and was pulling between two and three hundred amps. Also, we get a nice long trail of people who was to go faster, so I want to drop in a motor capable of keeping up with traffic, even up those hills. Just to ride around on these back roads, I would like to be able to maintain 40-45 or more, and I would like to be able to get on the highway with it (80mph top speed required just to keep up when it's going fast). How much power would I need to do each of those two things? Also, what motor would I use, and how would I mount it shaft output?

[Ryland]

There is no way you are going to get 80mph out of it without flipping the car over! the car doesn't have any anti-sway bars, it hardly has dampening on the suspension and a wheel base that is about as long as it is wide so at 50mph it's going to get really scary to drive, I've done that going down a really steep hill and I avoid that hill now.
How were you reading the amp draw? going on flat your motor should be drawing about 200 amps, so either you have a bad connection, very clean, snug connections are needed or you will melt battery cables and battery posts! so after driving a short distance feel each connection and when you find one that is warm or hot fix it right away! or if you are only able to draw 300 amps it might be a weak set of batteries or your batteries are not fully charged, if that is the case balance them and fully charge them.
To get a 40-45mph speed you should look at what TomEV did his goal was that same 40-45mph speed and he spent a lot of time and money to reach that goal, but he did it and he shared how he did it.
What's going to help you maintain that speed going up hills is going to be less weight and a battery pack that can handle high sustained amp draw, lithium batteries are the easy way to get there, 100amp hour or larger cells, a BMS and a charger that is designed for lithium batteries is going to be a bit of an investment but it will also drop the weight of your car by about 400 pounds! $2,500 to $3,500 for a whole set up, but I think it would be worth it.

[Daox]

Originally Posted by Ryland

There is no way you are going to get 80mph out of it without flipping the car over! the car doesn't have any anti-sway bars, it hardly has dampening on the suspension and a wheel base that is about as long as it is wide so at 50mph it's going to get really scary to drive, I've done that going down a really steep hill and I avoid that hill now.

Not to mention the brakes don't inspire a ton of confidence.

[rmay635703]

Originally Posted by Daox

Not to mention the brakes don't inspire a ton of confidence.

My car had a fairly brisk stopping distance with only the front brakes working. Main thing I recommend on a c-car is plug braking, that makes the brakes very reliable.

[hondaguy72]

After restoring and driving a 76 C-Car I'm going to agree. The chassis was never designed to go faster than 45mph. 30mph is fairly scary on the flats. I did a wilwood brake upgrade on the front (designed for a golf cart) and even then the brakes would only be barely sufficient for a 50mph stop. The steering is both heavy and vague and is almost jumpy at 30mph. If you really want an EV you'll be best served by doing a conversion on a car with the suspension bits designed to drive that fast. A Geo Metro or 1st gen Honda Crx would be good candidates. 96 volts at a minimum.

[Hogwit]

The ability to hold a constant 40-45 is something that I REALLY want it to do, and the top speed of 80 would be something cool, but not a necessity...and definately not something worth flipping the car over about . Going down those huge hills that, when going up, get you going incredibly slow gets you up to what my father and I both agree on being around 45-50...before we hit the brakes so as to not overspeed the motor, and neither of us were scared at all...well then again, we never get scared with things like that...
When I clicked your link to whatever TomEV did, I got a page that said:
Sorry - no matches. Please try some different terms.
Was it the field weakening thing? If so, he said that it gave him 2 mph, not really what I'm looking for, also just to be clear, 40-45 speed going up the hill is what I would be looking for, not just on flats. Otherwise you must be talking about the overvolt to 64 volts...and he said that the motor can't really handle the extra voltage. So I'm still looking for something else.
Given a lithium kit costing $3,000 (middle of your suggested cost range) for 100ah, that would yield around a 20 mile range (wasn't the original around 200ah of lead giving 40 miles...?). Obviously if the wh is cut in half and the weight dropped 1/3, you would be using less energy to go the same distance, but it definately won 't cut the wh/m in half to maintain the same range, AND I would still be using contactors rather than a solid state controller. What would be needed for a motor change to something with more power...able to climb hills around 45mph or faster (maybe a new differential )? The reason I haven't replaced his contactors yet is I don't know what my options would be in terms of ac vs. dc and the power requirement.
The measurement for amperage is a small ammeter that the former owner installed himself and the numbers are written on a paper that is taped on it. Underneath where the paper sits, there are the original numbers and it seems that it would be about 250 amps in that spot...hmmm
Also, under acceleration, we get around the 800 or 900...is that reasonable? I wouldn't think so...
Finally in my lithium batteries vs motor upgrade is the batteries in it are supposedly 3 years old, but only 50-100 miles on them, and they seem to work fine even for a 30 mile trip...
Also, whatever I do to the car, I don't really want to spend more than $2000, but I definately don't want to (or rather really can't) spend more than $3000....soooo....what's everybody's suggestions?

[Ryland]

Only time I've slowed my car down to 15mph going up a hill I was drawing over 400 amps and pulled over and made it crawl up the rest of the way because I have a slow blow 350amp fuse that I didn't feel like changing, but I often see 500-600 amps from my 650amp speed controller if I floor it, when I had contactors I'd see much higher because they are more like dropping the clutch with the engine rev'd on a gas car.

The 6v golf cart batteries are rated at 200 or 225amp hours at a 20 hour discharge rate, but 185amp hours at a 5 hour discharge rate and much lower capacity at a 1 hour rate... a lot of people guess that you have about 100 to 120 amp hours in them at that one hour rate but they don't have a labeled rating or that high of a discharge that I've seen, maybe someone has a chart? also you don't want to use up 100% of those amp hours on lead acid, unless you like buying new batteries, so your full range is often using 80% of the batteries capacity, I don't like to use much more then 50% so I can keep my batteries happy, lithium is different, lithium is ok discharging 80% and discharging it fast, some people say you can get by with a quarter of the rated capacity with Lithium batteries but I would rather play is safe and go for half.