Joined
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1,762 Posts
Your wife is a wise woman. Idle hands being the devil's plaything and all that. Nice to be encouraged to spend less time around her
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"Kits" aren't really kits, with how much everything needs to be customized. Shops, if they have kits, often specialize if a very narrow set of donor vehicles to have any chance of compatability.
If you're looking at a several-year long project, I wouldn't buy a kit. You clearly have the budget for toys, but I don't know that it would provide you much value, especially as someone who enjoys tinkering anyway. DIY EV is changing fairly rapidly. The meta of your build will be obsolete before you're done.
Your component selection can be almost completely agnostic. A motor just needs a power signal to spin, that signal can come from any (suitably configured) motor controller. The controller just needs battery in a general range, and it can be any battery. All your little supplementary components can be whatever.
The current DIY meta is seeing a lot of development towards VCUs, vehicle control units, off of a common base infrastructure. A touchscreen and visuals and integrated CAN and all that. These are rather nascent at the moment, proof of concept, but by the time you're done they'll be much better fleshed out. There's also a current microchip shortage that'll bleed into the next year, so I wouldn't be too keen on choosing any particular solution just yet.
Buy your batteries next to last, until then keep an eye on what you're likely to choose and how much space you have to put them. They're big, heavy, cheaper-the-more-you-wait, and better-the-more-you-wait.
90% of your enjoyment from the vehicle is going to be in your selection of the original vehicle, especially because you've got the budget to get what you want, so, I'd spend a lot of time playing there. Pick something older, the newer something is the more struggle there'll be disabling and fooling it to just being a normal car.
You could pick a motor now, or a motor target. Motors are going to be just about brainless. If you know what kind of performance you want, that'll help guide what you pick and how you're going to start integrating it into the car.
"Kits" aren't really kits, with how much everything needs to be customized. Shops, if they have kits, often specialize if a very narrow set of donor vehicles to have any chance of compatability.
If you're looking at a several-year long project, I wouldn't buy a kit. You clearly have the budget for toys, but I don't know that it would provide you much value, especially as someone who enjoys tinkering anyway. DIY EV is changing fairly rapidly. The meta of your build will be obsolete before you're done.
Your component selection can be almost completely agnostic. A motor just needs a power signal to spin, that signal can come from any (suitably configured) motor controller. The controller just needs battery in a general range, and it can be any battery. All your little supplementary components can be whatever.
The current DIY meta is seeing a lot of development towards VCUs, vehicle control units, off of a common base infrastructure. A touchscreen and visuals and integrated CAN and all that. These are rather nascent at the moment, proof of concept, but by the time you're done they'll be much better fleshed out. There's also a current microchip shortage that'll bleed into the next year, so I wouldn't be too keen on choosing any particular solution just yet.
Buy your batteries next to last, until then keep an eye on what you're likely to choose and how much space you have to put them. They're big, heavy, cheaper-the-more-you-wait, and better-the-more-you-wait.
90% of your enjoyment from the vehicle is going to be in your selection of the original vehicle, especially because you've got the budget to get what you want, so, I'd spend a lot of time playing there. Pick something older, the newer something is the more struggle there'll be disabling and fooling it to just being a normal car.
You could pick a motor now, or a motor target. Motors are going to be just about brainless. If you know what kind of performance you want, that'll help guide what you pick and how you're going to start integrating it into the car.