A Canadian wanting to learn about car conversions
I'm a retired vintage car restorer and have one last car I want to convert to electric. A 1949 Riley Roadster.
I'm looking to give it nice power with at least a 250 Km range. Any help, thoughts or prayers would be welcomed.
Jorgen
I'm looking to give it nice power with at least a 250 Km range. Any help, thoughts or prayers would be welcomed.
Jorgen
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Where are you located. I am in Victoria and would be happy to show you through my build.
I am expecting that kind of range in my CRX build
I'm just outside of Ottawa little village called Fitzroy Harbour
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I vaguely know where that is. I lived in Kingston for 4 years. Sadly a little far, 3000km, for a day trip.
That said I have fit 32kwh of battery into my crx and expect between 200 and 250km out of that.
Our 64kwh kona gets 400 to 500 on a full charge mostly highway driving 80-100kph. My hope is I can exceed that with the crx being a much smaller and lighter, 950kg compared to the konas near 1700kg. But it should give you an idea of where to aim battery size wise
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I am using the LG Chem 2.6kwh "Pacifica" modules. I bought them through thunderstruck EV as they did a bulk discount and were the best price I found after talking to several places. To my knowledge nobody is selling these right now. My understanding is LG placed a cease and desist, as I don't believe they were coming from pacifica's but were actually some form of offsale.
If I were personally buying batteries right now I would probably wind up going with one of ZeroEV's Calb modules, largely because they have a cooling plate solution already worked out. Battery Modules - Zero EV
That said there are hundreds of options. Used tesla modules be they from teslas, mercedes, or smart cars. Leaf modules are common and can be found at Canadian junkyard for decent deals, a yard near me had a 30kw leaf pack for $3000.
All said though batteries are likely to be one of the bigger ticket items on a build as range costs money and there is no way around that. Using salvaged batteries can keep that down but then you have to go with what is available.
Zero EV lists the same cooling plates for both their LG Chem and their CALB modules of the same format. This appears to be an industry standard (VDA 355), so there are production EV modules (likely the Jaguar i-Pace and possibly the Samsung SDI modules in a VW e-Golf) and the OX-Drive Energy modules from ElectricGT which would also likely fit. Of course the i-Pace is new and the e-Golf is not common...
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I talked a bunch with zero ev at one point about their cooling plates as my build is going to have some. Sadly the pacifica modules are a different form factor. It is pretty neat how things have come forward even just in the year since my build began
True - the "Pacifica" modules use a different size of cell than the modules that I listed: it is longer in both dimensions, so the two dimensions of the modules are larger (the longest module dimension is determined by how many cells are stacked). An option for the "Pacifica" modules is to salvage the chill plate from an actual Pacifica PHEV, if you can find one and if the format fits... it holds the modules in two rows, each of three modules directly against each other (so each row is 362x609 mm). Snowdog had custom chill plates built for the "Pacifica" modules in his EV build of a K1-Attack kit.
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I have gone the custom route. Not too dissimilar from snowdog's.
That is my rear box(4 modules) and one of the two up front which is two 4 module sandwiches
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I lived in victoria for 12 years just posted to ottawa for a bit but will be back next year maybe. Would love if possible to take a look at what you have done for a conversion. I'm seriously thinking of converting my rat truck to electric.
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Be happy to show you. I am ex Navy myself. By that time it should be running too!
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I think that this is a very great idea. I would like to see such a project like an old vintage car on an electric engine. This will be very sensational for a lot of car lovers. From my own experience, electrical cars are the best invention nowadays. Recently, I bought a BMW I3. I dreamed about this car for almost three years. I got it with the help of a loan that I got from one of the offers shown on The Home of Everything Automotive - Car.co.uk. This platform helped me to understand how benefic are the offers from a different company. In this way, I released my dream.
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