Possible Citicar upgrade?
 

Hacker Brushless A200-8 - Aero Model Inc.
With this:
HobbyKing R/C Hobby Store : Turnigy Fatboy 300A ESC 5~15S - (OPTO)
110kv*48(if you do 48volts)=5280rpm
Of I remember right, stock is 3200rpm which gives around 30+ mph
5280/3200=1.65
1.65*30+=49.5+mph
So 50mph with 15kw or 20hp peak in a car that weighs about 1/2 of a ton...and in comparison to the stock 3.5hp, you're really having some fun...

I have converted a Razor E300 to have a brushless setup. Stock it didn't really move, and was obviously pointless. Now:
-Turnigy Rotomax 1.60
-9s (37.8 volt full charge, 33.3 volt nominal) 12ah lipos
-Range around 10± miles
When geared up I hit 65+, now its around 35mph top speed. Stock was supposedly 15, but realistically 7-8mph was peak.

Also yes that motor is extremely expensive, and there are cheaper options (which is probably what I would go with).

I'm running the stock motor in my Commuti-car, same motor as the Citi-car and the 3.5hp motor is rated at 6hp when forced cooled on the commuti-car, seeing a constant 200 to 250 amps is common, seeing 300 to 400 amps is common when going up hills and I've seen my motor draw a peek of over 500 amps when going up steep hills, that is why I installed a 650 amp solid state speed controller, so the speed controller wouldn't be the weakest point, instead the batteries with their max discharge rate of around 550 amps become the limiting factor and if your car has the contactor speed controls instead of a solid state speed controller you can see 600+ amps being pulled by this 125 amp motor you have for a few seconds at a time, but it's not a good idea because you can brake or melt parts of the drive train!
I'm sure it's slight over kill, but I did a few upgrades on my car including 00 welding cable between all of the batteries and the speed controller, stock battery cables are 4 gauge, that controller is bragging about having 10 gauge (large the number the smaller the cable size, 00 is nice and big) the old 4 gauge battery cables would get warm, I've melted the posts off batteries, vaporized 8 and 10 gauge wires inside the motor twice now and had my old battery cables to hot enough that I was worried about melting the insulation on them.
Your 3.5hp motor will put out more power at it's peek, around 28hp or more, so don't underestimate it, if you want better performance, save up for some good lithium batteries, but make sure they can handle the discharge or you will destroy some good lithium batteries, if you do end up with lithium batteries you might look at going with 72v and just limit your driving speed so you don't over speed your motor and blow it up.

Well long before a lithium upgrade, I think that an upgrade to a solid state controller is needed. The reason the Fatboy has dual 10 guage is it's lighter than significantly larger wires, and being that it is designed to make a 50+ pound thing fly 100+mph vertical, weight is an issue.
My scooter pulls a peak of around 3700 watts accelerating up the steepest hill around and that is well....fun lol, the wires is 10 guage, and yes, it does get warm doing that. 36+ volts@3700+ watts=100+ amps going through 10 gauge wire and connectors rated at 80 amps.
Unrelated, while also related:
1) What would you suggest for a solid state controller? (Don't have lots of money, but want it to be reliable.)
2) What would you suggest for a lithium pack/balancer/charger when going that route?
3) If you had a lithium pack, what would you do to incorporate solar charging? There are 48v lead acid solar chargers, but I don't know of any 72v solar chargers especially not for lithium. What solar panel? 6 (or 3) small 12 (or 24) volt ones or are there any 72 volt ones?
4) How many amp hour (ah) is the 48v pack in the citicar (supposed) to be to provide the supposed 50 mile range which no one will realistically hit with lead acid?

If I'm going 30mph on flat ground my car pulls 6,000 watts, that is after it is up to speed with no head wind, a small incline in the road will make it jump up to 8,000 or 10,000 watts, the steepest hill I've climbed in my car I ended up pulling over and slowing down because the gauge was reading over 30,000 watts and I didn't want to melt or burn up anything.

I have an Alltrax controller, I bought their AXE 4865 controller because I have hills around here and I wanted to over size the controller so it would be bullet proof, other people I've talked to have used the AXE 7245 controller, a 450amp peek controller, but the only real advantage that I see to that one is that you could upgrade to a higher voltage battery pack while keeping that speed controller, buying the kit to build an Open Revolt speed controller is going to cost a little less then buying a fully built, warrantied, ready to install Alltrax, but if you have more time then money and want to build a speed controller it might be worth while.
Do NOT buy a Kelly controller unless you like stuff that starts on fire and a warranty that is worthless.
Other options for 48v speed controllers are pretty limited, GE makes some 500 amp golf cart speed controllers that you can get from golf cart shops but they are about the same price as an Alltrax and the AXE can be programmed and has other nice features, Curtis also make some nice speed controllers including some 48v ones for golf carts and fork lifts, so it's worth checking around to see what you can get used as well, most of the better built speed controllers will tapper back your throttle instead of burning up, but the more you push the limits of the speed controller, like say running a 350 amp speed controller in your car, the shorter it's life span is going to be because it's running at closer to it's peek nearly all the time and it's going to be hotter as well because of this so it's going to wear out sooner.

Alltrax AXE Products Page

Stuff with Lithium is changing all the time so doing research in a year or two or whenever you can do lithium might be the way to go, people I know like the GBS lithium batteries and a few people I've talked to have ThunderSky lithium batteries, some people claim you don't need a BMS but if you skip it you run the risk of destroying the battery pack, a cheap BMS that is just an over charge protection with a shunt resister can have issues as well, have heard of people having them start on fire due to over heating, a good BMS needs to be able to communicate between batteries as well as shut down the charger if a cell is getting to full on top of shunting power past the batteries that are full.
But as I said, when it gets closer to getting lithium batteries do your research then as you will have a ton more options then you do right now, although you do have a bunch of options right now.

First off, solar panels don't really belong on a vehicle for many reasons, but you can get battery chargers for lithium batteries and you can get 72v charge controller s for solar panels for lead acid batteries, but they cost $1,000+ last I checked.
My dad was asking me more or less the same question the other day, wanting to know if he should rig up a system so he can charge their EV right off their solar panels and what we came up with was it was going to be best to have the solar panels tied in to the house power grid and we settled on that because then the solar panels are always doing work and when you plug the car in to charge it you are using the same battery charger as you would any other time and you aren't having redundant battery chargers on the vehicle.

battery pack amp hours will vary a little, buy batteries from Wal-Mart and you might only get 180ah (20 hour rating) batteries, while I see the Trojan T105 have a 225ah rating (185ah 5 hour rating), so in the same size batteries you can get a range of capacities, the higher capacity is why I went with the Trojan's, that and they have a great reputation, I'm not sure who claimed you could get a 50 mile range out of a Citi-car, all the sales stuff I've read from the 1970's said 40 miles, my batteries are 3 years old and driving 18 miles took them down to 52%, taking them down to 20% is said to be ok by some people but it will shorten your battery life! so I might have been able to get 40 miles on my pack when it was brand new and at 3 years old (I take good care of my battery pack) I'm sure I could get 30 miles out of them and still be fine but I wouldn't do that kind of trip more then a few times a year and I would want to charge them up as soon as possible! so usable AH in my pack I figure is around 100 amp hours in a 225ah pack, that gives me a nice safe buffer to keep my batteries happy and because of that I figure I'm going to get 5-6 years out of them while some people figure they are replacing batteries ever 3-4 years, but for me to drive to work my pack is at 73% full according to my PakTrakr gauge and 85% full according to battery voltage after sitting for 3 minutes, at that point I plug in and recharge at work, so with shallow discharges like that my batteries are staying really happy, I still put a lot of miles on them but I charge them whenever I can too.
If you are looking at lithium batteries, 100 amp hour cells are about as small as I'd go with unless you bump the voltage up, lower amp hour cells are not going to handle the discharge rates that you might see going up hills and so on.

Keep in mind, you are driving a registered, insured car, I am talking about a scooter with a motor the size of a fist pulling 3700 watts. I found a used alltrax 7245 for sale $365; what are they new?
Btw I did mean 40 mile range, I am typing on a 4.0" screen, and obviously, autocorrect doesn't change your numbers. Also thanks for such detailed answers.

Around $550-$680, if it hasn't been used a whole lot then it sounds like a good deal, you might find one a little cheaper from someone who tried putting it in a larger car and found it to be undersized, but that is such a nice size speed controller for our cars and for golf carts that they seem to hold their value.

And a 4844 for $175

So I am between an Alltrax 4844 for $175, and an Alltrax 7245 for $365, more than double the cost, but the same amperage...the possibility to go up in voltage sounds great to me, but, I am a 15 year old with not too much money, and I still need another "real" car, so the extra $200 might have to wait for another day...

The 7245 is rated for 450 amps for 2 minutes, while the 4844 is only rated for 400 amps for two minutes, where you will notice it is once you get past the 300amp 5 minute rating of the 4844 is that it's only rated for a sustained 1 hour rating of 150 amps while the 7245 can sustain 200 amps for an hour, that extra 50 amps in that 5 minute to 60 minute time frame is a 25% drop in power, with my 4865 speed controller I've felt it drop from it's 400amp output to 250 amp output, so I'm not sure what having it drop down to 150 amp output would be like but it would make going up hills a rather slow event.

Alltrax AXE Products Page

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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 :eek:)? 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?

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.

Ooh ooh ooh! You guys have bigger motors!
The 3.5 hp motor in mine has a rating (according to someone online somewhere) of 98 amps @ 36 volts. So lets see how that goes:
36*98=3528
3528/750=4.704
3.5/4.704=.744.....
74% efficient sounds reasonable using just ratings here

Now what should I be pulling with 48 volts?
48/36=x/98
36x=4704
X=4704/36
X=130....
Right where it looks like I am on that paper he wrote up and taped on!

Yes we do pull over on that hill that gets us down to 15mph...

Maybe some used lithium cells and an Alltrax 4865 or 7245 (I think those are the two models...) I'm not sure yet...lol

Ooh ooh ooh! You guys have bigger motors!
The 3.5 hp motor in mine has a rating (according to someone online somewhere) of 98 amps @ 36 volts. So lets see how that goes:
36*98=3528
3528/750=4.704
3.5/4.704=.744.....
74% efficient sounds reasonable using just ratings here

Now what should I be pulling with 48 volts?
48/36=x/98
36x=4704
X=4704/36
X=130....
Right where it looks like I am on that paper he wrote up and taped on!

Yes we do pull over on that hill that gets us down to 15mph...

Maybe some used lithium cells and an Alltrax 4865 or 7245 (I think those are the two models...) I'm not sure yet...lol

Also, sorry about typos being...everywhere...I'm typing on a 4.0" screen...

Hills that draw you down that slow can also blow brushes if you aren't careful.

If you insist on high speed driving with a C-car I recommend you emulate what was done with the Comutacar and lengthen your wheelbase (aka push the rear axle back).

I also recommend plug braking because C-car brakes work well when they work correctly, but are not reliable.

That said I did drive my Comutacar down the highway many times hopping down the road at about 50mph, most I ever got was 62mph down a steep hill. I had to turn the wheel into every 4th hunk of cement road or the car started bucking like a bronco. I have also ridden in a Citicar, mine seems to be more stable, if you are good at suspension and alignment you will need to tinker a lot to get it in form, same with the brakes.

Cheers
Ryan

How much longer is the Commuti-car wheel base? I thought they had the same wheel base, but I've never measured to see for my self.

As for the motors on the commuti-cars being larger, I don't think that is the case, TomEV has said, and my research seems to agree, that they are the same motor in the 36v Citi-car and the 48V Commuti-car, other then of course what Ryan has in his Commuti-car... Ryan, you have a D&D motor, right? but the GE motor the Commuti-car and Citi-car's use are the same other then the forced cooling that the commuti-cars have giving them a different rating, their raw power output tho should be the same, their brushes and field windings at least are the same.

TomEV also had Helwig Carbon make special two piece brushes with dual leads on them that can handle more current and they shouldn't bounce as much so there should be less arcing, not sure if he has any spare sets or how much it would cost to have them make up more based off the spec sheet that they have on file, I have a set of these upgrade brushes seated in to my Commuti-cars motor and the motor is ready to install... a project that has been on my to-do list for a few weeks now.

Every C-car was slightly different

There was the old style Citicar, the transistional Citicar, the original Comutacar, the transistional Comutacar and the last Comutacar.

My car as far as I can tell has at least 6" more wheelbase and a bit more space in the wheelwells than the Citicar I saw. I believe it is somewhat related to how the battery boxes changed position and because of the size difference between a 4.80x12 and a135x80r13.

Of coarse my car may have been slightly modified because I have a 9" D&D motor.

Understand that the 3.5hp motor was only on the Terrell axle cars (doesn't matter if its a comuta or citi)

Later cars (1980/81/82) really could come with a 6hp or 8hp motor (of coarse they all had forced air as far as I know)