[Woodsmith]

OK, this may be a very slow moving thread as I have to keep to a very small budget and with minimal time to do this but I might as well start somewhere.
My primary income is as a part time college teacher with the occasional furniture or carpentry commission. Most of my time is taken up with studying for my Masters Degree in environmental architecture, attending teacher training, renovating my house and voluntary working for the local amateur theatre.
I will be keeping my diesel estate (station wagon?) and two self built 1.5 ton trailers (one closed box, one open and extending) for the heavy long distance work.

I'll start with my EV requirements:

To seat 1+1 - ie. me and some luggage or me and a small friend.
To have a comfortable range of 35 miles to work - may need 70 miles if no charge point at work.
To drive 2/3 of that distance at 60+mph.
To be weather proof.

What I would like if I could afford and achieve it:

To seat 2 with luggage.
To have a comfortable range of 100 miles.
To cruise at 70mph for around 50 miles.
To be able to tow a small trailer occasionally
To look good.

I am happy to convert a suitable vehicle if I can find one. I am also keen to build from scratch.
I don't mind a reverse trike if it is light enough to have legislation benefits in the UK and improves range.
If I scratch build I am tempted to build a plywood monocoque on a steel subframe given that I am a cabinet maker.

Skills base:
I have restored Land Rovers and MGBs, built a racing MGB, built a 6x6 Land Rover with my own design 3 speed transfer box and three point suspension.
I am a qualified as a:
Motor vehicle mechanic and pipe welder
Electrician (house and light industrial)
Carpenter
Furniture maker
Part trained as a mechanical engineer
Can do some panel beating in steel and aluminium

My father is a electrical engineer trained by the British Army and for the first time he also thinks this is a good idea so he is on side.

I have mechanical hand tools, angle grinders, a couple of MMA welders and a pillar drill. I am currently looking for a small engineering lathe and then set up some work space at home.

The downside is that I have no garage, just a large driveway, and my workshop is for furniture making so no metal filings or greasy marks allowed. I am also not that knowledgeable about electronics - if I can't see how it works I generally don't understand it.

OK, so that is where I am at the moment. I think the plan is to find and recondition a forklift motor, sort out the motor side of the coupler, sort out a controller and then start looking for a vehicle to convert or to start scratch building. Once I have a vehicle or chassis plan I can look at getting batteries and chargers.
Throughout this process I will need to learn the requirements for the British IVA process to get anything other then a straight conversion legislated for road use.

Any advice from here onwards would be most welcome.

Thank you

[Amberwolf]

I don't yet have any suggestions for what you should do except that I would *love* to see a wooden EV! Even if it is not *all* wood, but still styled in it, just to see a lovingly-made electric horseless carriage would be wonderful.

[Woodsmith]

For a woodie I was thinking of steel chassis rails to hold the mechanical bits and batteries under the floor and a roll over hoop. The whole thing would then be clothed in angular ply panels to look a bit like the Apache helicopter or the T-Rex so it would be a single seater with luggage or a small seat behind. Not so much horseless carriage really.

I would use an MGB front suspension member and shaft drive motorbike rear wheel to make it a reverse trike.

A simple conversion would be easier though.

[fritzgutten]

Hey Woody, yes a conversion would be mush easier without having a shop to work in.
If you havent yet, you might want to check out the plans built vortex. I've only seen gassers but for the most part, the chassis is plywood built, with a fiberglass overlay. the drive and suspension bits are steel.
theres a huge weight and complexity issue with doing the fiberglass overlay though.
there are other wood based trikes out there as well. you can check out reversetrike.com to see whats out there.
fred

[Woodsmith]

The options on whether to build or convert will wait until I am there and I will then see how it goes. The lack of covered space is an issue, Manchester isn't known as the rainy city for nothing!

In the meantime I have very roughly mocked up the mechanical speed controller as featured in this thread.
I did it as simply as possible using some 22mm copper water pipe cut and then glued to a 20mm pvc conduit with some epoxy.
The 12v supply went to the moving contact and the fixed contact at the bottom end of the controller went to the motor.

The copper tube doesn't need to be full length but it saved the trouble of maintaining the diameter across the cut.

You can't really see the speed of the gear motor very well due to the resolution of my camera phone, however, you can hear the sound of it speeding up and slowing down.
Here's the video:

As you can see it is very low budget and made from the scraps bin.

[SimonRafferty]

That's fantastic! Well done!

Si

[Woodsmith]

I have a donor car!

I went out to have a look at this MR2 and decided to have it.

The seller wasn't wrong when he says there is no rust. The only rusty things I could find were a bit of surface rust on the fan mounting in the drivers side vent and the heads of a couple of bolts in the engine bay.
Comes with a shed load of spares too.

I will be getting it transported to mine this weekend all being well.

[SimonRafferty]

That looks a bloody good starting point!

My Freeloader is being inspected for the insurance on Wednesday - so hopefully I'll be on the road wed evening!

Si

[Woodsmith]

Good luck with the inspection, Simon, I'm sure it will be fine.

I'm reckoning on recovering all or most the cost of the car through selling off the unwanted bits, and there are a lot of unwanted bits.

The only bad news is that I wasn't expecting to get a car so soon and with the delivery costs it has blown my budget for the time being and I am going to lose the bidding on the engineering lathe I want. I can't afford to get both at the moment.

If I could get the lathe I could do most of my own turning for the conversion.

[SimonRafferty]

Shame you are so far away - I have a pretty good workshop with CNC lathe & mill. A Lathe is definitely worth buying - probably the single most enabling tool I have.

If you need any quick stuff turning - send me a drawing and I'll see what I can do.

Si