Has anyone built from scratch?

6363 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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Ingot

· #10 · Feb 28, 2011 (Edited)

Lupinthief said:
What I would be planning is a lightweight spaceframe chassis (probably alloy) with two hub motors driving rear wheels and a single front wheel.

Three-wheel systems are horrible; no offense, but they are. Not sure what everyone's fascination with them is, really.

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Ingot

· #13 · Feb 28, 2011

nimblemotors said:
that is hilarious, they do such a great job.

oh yeah, scratch built car, I suggest starting at the bottom, rather than the top of the automotive hobby,
build a go-cart before a F1 racecar, convert to an EV. start simple. My friend and I built three go carts before I was 16.
My first custom car I was 18 years old, swapped a complete Toyota drivetrain into a Anglia. This was after rebuilding my V8 engine twice
and a third time I put a stock motor in.. That Anglia was horrendous. Handled like crap,
I remember seeing the tires were low, filled them up to 30lbs, the car was scary as hellll, pulled over and let the air back out.

I'll agree with that! I have no experience in building a car or anything other than computers and networks

but I'll say that I'm sure it takes a lot of knowledge to be able to build a car from scratch.

I mean, there have been a lot of EVs built from scratch, specifically for longevity, power, practicality, etc. Look at http://www.progressiveautoxprize.org/ for some examples.

Other than that, unless you're very, very rich, or backed by a very, very rich source of lots and lots of money, there's not much sense in starting from scratch because you're not going to make the best car you could make.

Not wanting to shoot down your dreams, you've obviously had more experience than me, I say just build what you can, as well as you can, with a pre-existing car.

Convert and modify the hell out of it, make a blog about it, make videos of it, show off the build, and be proud of it, I guess? Won't be the best car in the world, but hey! Better than what most people will build in their lifetimes, most people won't even attempt a build, and even more won't keep at it or finish it.

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