Has anyone built from scratch?

6354 Views 26 Replies 11 Participants Last post by Thumper, Feb 28, 2011

Lupinthief

Discussion Starter · Feb 27, 2011

Hi. I'm fairly new here and have been fascinated by the wisdom and information available here. I am, however, intrigued because there seem to be very few people building from scratch and those vehicles which are aren't usually for road use.

I reckon that if a car were build from scratch and some concessions were made to the necessities of weight, rolling resistance and aerodynamics, and one modified one's expectations of what the car could do (i.e. accept that there is limited boot space etc.) then the performance and range for a given elecrical setup could be significantly improved.

I've built a few vehicles and reckon (if using LiPos) that a 2-seater vehicle could come in well under 300kg without passengers, if not close to 200kg and have a CDA of under 0.2 if well designed.

Has anyone tried to build from scratch or have any advice on such a policy? There must be something I'm missing.

Thoughts and inspiration welcome

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Thumper

· #20 · Feb 28, 2011

I'm working on a scratch build.
It's a two seater sports car. I've finished the chassis and am starting to mount the fiberglass body. Winter is holding me up as it's too messy and dusty to do fiberglass work in the shop.

The car has an AC50 drive using suzuki swift transaxle and a 96 volt 100Ah LiFePo4 battery pack. It's final weight should be around 1100 lb. I expect 0 to 60 mph to be around 6 seconds.

It's a lot of work and engineering build a car from scratch. I started over a year ago and since I'm retired, I can work on it pretty well every day.

Complete build log here -> http://www.szott.com/zot2/zot2.html

Happy to answer any questions.

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Thumper

· #23 · Feb 28, 2011

MalcolmB said:
That's a very professional job Thumper. Did you make up the motor to transmission adapter yourself, or is it an off the shelf piece?

Bought it off the shelf from Can EV in BC Canada http://www.canev.com/KitsComp/Components/Adapter page.htm

Nice aluminum casting, well machined, perfect fit. I doubt I could have made my own for much less.

Also got my AC50 kit and batteries from them.

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Thumper

· #27 · Feb 28, 2011

kek_63 said:
Very nice work Thumper. Are you located anywhere near Windsor? I would like to come see your projects. Also, if you need something whipped up I have my own CNC machine center.

Keith

I'm in Pickering, ON, just east of Toronto.
Let me know if you're down this way and we can set something up.

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