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510 Posts
Hi everyone,
It has been a while since I last posted. Some of you may remember my previous projects which were budget minded autocross centred EVs. Since then our governing body has closed the gate on EVs and there is no glimmer of hope for the foreseeable future for electric vehicles under them. So my last chassis is going into retirement. I am commencing a new project which will enable me to continue my EV journey on public streets. It will be a scratch built Porsche 55 Spyder themed road car.
I have placed a deposit on a locally built chassis which normally has a fibreglass body but will be near perfect for my objective.
I will be building a buck for the 55o style body and constructing an aluminium body.
I know there are kits available. But I am not really doing this to gain a car. I am doing this for the satisfaction that can only be obtained by doing something special.
It will not be a true replica as the interior and some other details will be different. One notable difference will be the addition of head rests which are mandatory for all new road cars here. I will be building streamlined pods behind each occupant. The headrest will be built into the front of each pod. Inside each pod will be a roll bar.
I will be aiming to have about 20kwh of capacity.
The voltage is yet to be nailed down but it will be somewhere between 175 and 350 depending on the final choice of controller. I may well start with my existing ZEVA controller and upgrade later.
I had ambitions of having a front and rear motor providing all wheel drive. But I need to have an engineer certification for road registration. It has gone through a few iterations and I haven't fully landed on the final decisions but AWD is off the table. I can do pretty much anything but I face a choice between something different which would incur at least $5000 extra cost for all the tests. So I am having to compromise in order to align with a previously tested chassis and avoid all the extra costs. The approved design is 550Kg (1200lbs) so keeping reasonable battery capacity and power is tricky. The chassis design calls for a mid mounted drive train using a FWD gearbox. I know a load of people will scoff at the idea of running a gearbox but again changing this part of the design would trigger a chain reaction that would result in a heap of delays and extra costs. Running through the gearbox means I only need an adaptor and mounts and I'm good to go.
The motor I am running is an Advanced DC 8 inch. In the previous car the motor performed excellently from 0 - 80kph (45mph) but was lacklustre from there to 100kph (70mph). But that was running at 172v so the back EMF was catching me in the higher revs. So I am intending to swap to a controller that can handle high volts to combat the back EMF and give better top end performance. But even if I run with the ZEVA controller for a while it will perform just like my last car which was awesome up to 80kph.
This will be a long project but I plan to provide regular updates along the way.
I have placed a deposit on the chassis. So I anticipate picking it up in March (maybe). I have already designed the slices for the buck and I can get started on parts of the construction. I have already created a scale mockup of the buck in paper just to check for any concerns. As a result I am adjusting my approach slightly. I have an english wheel and bead roller. I will need to purchase a few other tools and I need to do a TIG course (booked in for March). I am practicing with the various techniques and in particular I am performing a full size proof of concept on the door area to understand how to achieve a good gap.
I will upload some photos for reference shortly
It has been a while since I last posted. Some of you may remember my previous projects which were budget minded autocross centred EVs. Since then our governing body has closed the gate on EVs and there is no glimmer of hope for the foreseeable future for electric vehicles under them. So my last chassis is going into retirement. I am commencing a new project which will enable me to continue my EV journey on public streets. It will be a scratch built Porsche 55 Spyder themed road car.
I have placed a deposit on a locally built chassis which normally has a fibreglass body but will be near perfect for my objective.
I will be building a buck for the 55o style body and constructing an aluminium body.
I know there are kits available. But I am not really doing this to gain a car. I am doing this for the satisfaction that can only be obtained by doing something special.
It will not be a true replica as the interior and some other details will be different. One notable difference will be the addition of head rests which are mandatory for all new road cars here. I will be building streamlined pods behind each occupant. The headrest will be built into the front of each pod. Inside each pod will be a roll bar.
I will be aiming to have about 20kwh of capacity.
The voltage is yet to be nailed down but it will be somewhere between 175 and 350 depending on the final choice of controller. I may well start with my existing ZEVA controller and upgrade later.
I had ambitions of having a front and rear motor providing all wheel drive. But I need to have an engineer certification for road registration. It has gone through a few iterations and I haven't fully landed on the final decisions but AWD is off the table. I can do pretty much anything but I face a choice between something different which would incur at least $5000 extra cost for all the tests. So I am having to compromise in order to align with a previously tested chassis and avoid all the extra costs. The approved design is 550Kg (1200lbs) so keeping reasonable battery capacity and power is tricky. The chassis design calls for a mid mounted drive train using a FWD gearbox. I know a load of people will scoff at the idea of running a gearbox but again changing this part of the design would trigger a chain reaction that would result in a heap of delays and extra costs. Running through the gearbox means I only need an adaptor and mounts and I'm good to go.
The motor I am running is an Advanced DC 8 inch. In the previous car the motor performed excellently from 0 - 80kph (45mph) but was lacklustre from there to 100kph (70mph). But that was running at 172v so the back EMF was catching me in the higher revs. So I am intending to swap to a controller that can handle high volts to combat the back EMF and give better top end performance. But even if I run with the ZEVA controller for a while it will perform just like my last car which was awesome up to 80kph.
This will be a long project but I plan to provide regular updates along the way.
I have placed a deposit on the chassis. So I anticipate picking it up in March (maybe). I have already designed the slices for the buck and I can get started on parts of the construction. I have already created a scale mockup of the buck in paper just to check for any concerns. As a result I am adjusting my approach slightly. I have an english wheel and bead roller. I will need to purchase a few other tools and I need to do a TIG course (booked in for March). I am practicing with the various techniques and in particular I am performing a full size proof of concept on the door area to understand how to achieve a good gap.
I will upload some photos for reference shortly





