| Owner | John Loveless | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Owner's Other EVs | 2007 Black and Decker 1991 Geo Metro EV --RETIRED | ||||||||
| Location | Kaysville, Utah United States map | ||||||||
| Web/Email | WebPage | ||||||||
| Vehicle | 1992 Toyota Pickup I have retired this vehicle. All parts have been sold off to make room in the garage for my wife's Leaf and to fund my other experiments/projects. | ||||||||
| Motor | Kostov ET20/9.0/40 Series Wound DC 27 horsepower 96 Volt 260Amp 4000 rpm 178 lb motor I am running it at 120 volts but it doesn't seem to care. | ||||||||
| Drivetrain | Original manual transmission and flywheel (removed the starter ring gear). I use all 5 gears and clutch still. I use Royal Purple in transmission and 0W30 in differential. | ||||||||
| Controller | Curtis 1221 Only 400Amp max. It's a little sluggish starting my truck from a stand still so I start in 1st gear on hills. With a super massive 17 lb aluminum heat-sink, it no longer has overheating issues. | ||||||||
| Batteries | 20 Costco/Kirkland Golf Cart, 6.00 Volt, Lead-Acid, Flooded Costco sells these 225Ahr golf cart batteries for $79 each. After core charge and taxes that works out to $94 each. | ||||||||
| System Voltage | 120 Volts | ||||||||
| Charger | Home made Home made capacitive charger and bridge rectifier. Charges battery in 5-7 hrs at 240 volts or 12-14 hours at 120 volts. I monitor energy consumption with a kill-a-watt meter and TED5000. Overcharging the batteries every couple weeks equalized all the cells. | ||||||||
| Heater | I bought a ceramic space heater element but never installed it. I insulated my garage and I survived the winter quite comfortably w/o a heater. 9/25/2012: Failed safety inspection for no heater. Lame! Remedied by installing space heater element into the heater core. Works great but sucks amps. | ||||||||
| DC/DC Converter | Modified ATX power supply I opened up an ATX 400 watt computer power supply. Connect the 120 volt battery voltage to where the +&- terminals of the bridge rectifier meet. Works great to run all 12 volt systems. Only cost me $39. Brilliant! | ||||||||
| Instrumentation | Analog volt meter, amp meter (volt meter reading shunt voltage drop). They are installed in the cluster where the gas and temperature gauges used to be. All LED lights (less headlamps). | ||||||||
| Top Speed | 87 MPH (139 KPH) After getting low rolling resistance tires, top speed went from 70 to 85. Cool. After aeromods, I got it up to 87mph quite easily. The truck doesn't handle well driving at these speeds. I keep it at 55-60 mph just to maximize range. | ||||||||
| Acceleration | Slow. 0-60mph in maybe 25 seconds. By the time I leave the on-ramp and get on the freeway I can get it up to 65mph so I'm happy with it. Passing someone on the freeway going 75mph is a sluggish affair. | ||||||||
| Range | 67 Miles (107 Kilometers) Thanks to aeromods max range is now 67miles (45 highway miles followed by 22 city miles as battery weakened) Max range of continuous freeway 55mph driving is 50+ miles. Winter driving range is 40 miles. 5/2012: max freeway range is now only 35 miles as my batteries have degraded) Driving faster (65mph) kills the range and I can only go about 22 miles in the winter time. 6/26/2012 I can drive about 22 miles continuous and battery is getting low. Max freeway range is approx 30 miles. 7/20/2012 Weird! Batteries are doing much better now. All the extra charge I have been giving them with my capacitive charger must be doing some good de-sulfating. Max freeway range is probably 35 miles now. 8/22/2012: Found 4 bad batteries and a heat-damaged wire. I resurrected 2 of them by de-sulfating them separately and range has improved significantly. The other 2 batteries need more time coming back to life on the de-sulfating machine. Range on the now 108V pack is about 30 miles freeway. 9/25/2012: Range is crappy especially on Tuesdays. I don't know why. Every other day it does just fine. Tuesdays 18- freeway miles. Every other day 25-freeway miles. Luckily I can plug in at work so I can make it 20 miles back home. | ||||||||
| Watt Hours/Mile | 295 Wh/Mile Energy consumption is based off of a kill-a-watt meter reading after a full battery charge. I get all my electricity from the grid- tied solar panels on the house roof. It was 325 Whr/Mile but after adding the full undercarriage cover, it dropped another 35 Whrs/mile. Wow! 5/12/2012: For some reason, it takes more energy to charge my batteries all the way now. I think they are over the hill. 6/26/2012 In the past I only gave my batteries a bulk charge on the capacitive charger. Lead acid batteries are nearly 100% efficient during the bulk charge. Lately, I have had to leave them longer in the top-off charge stage (only 50% efficient) and charge them more to get sufficient range. Whr/mile is about 350. Yuck. Peurkert effect has gotten worse too. 8/22/2012: After de-sulfating bad batteries separately, the energy consumption has gone back down. To my surprise, my 20-mi commute on a 96V pack (down 4 batteries) only took 250Wh/mi. I'm guessing that being 250lbs lighter at the time and driving 50-55mph the whole way helped. 9/25/2012: Battery pack takes lots more energy to charge it. It used to only take 5.8kWh to drive 20 miles. Now it takes almost 8kWh. | ||||||||
| EV Miles |
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| Seating Capacity | 3 adults uncomfortably | ||||||||
| Curb Weight | 3,600 Pounds (1,636 Kilograms) 2700 lb truck less 500 ICE components. Add 1240 lbs of lead, 180 lb motor, and about 120 lbs of electronics and angle iron. Removed tailgate, bumper and spare tire (4/12/2012 removed flywheel and clutch). I myself lost 15 lbs converting this truck. | ||||||||
| Tires | P185/75R14 Hankook Optimo H724'a. Had these installed and they made a huge difference in range over the original ones that came with the truck. | ||||||||
| Conversion Time | 3 months | ||||||||
| Conversion Cost | $7944 including cost of donor vehicle. | ||||||||
| Additional Features | Lead foot breaks and arm-strong steering. The nice new paint job is my handiwork. I have never painted a car before. It was really easy and turned out much better than I would have imagined. The Peurkert Effect is my enemy. For extended range, I made aerodynamic improvements. Smooth pizza pan hubcaps, rear wheel skirts, front grill block and added a full undercarriage cover. The tail fins are for awesomeness only. Update: 5/2012. I ripped out the flywheel and clutch. Now without 42 extra lbs of spinning mass, it has better acceleration. Shifting gears takes about 1 second without a clutch. 6/26/2012 My motor is making a funny squeaky sound at certain throttle levels and another squeaky sound when coasting. How annoying. I'm assuming my shaft coupler has slipped and is rubbing against the motor shaft. I may have to tear into it to see what is going on. Still drives great except for (in the dead heat of summer) all my aero-mods are causing slight overheating after 18 miles of strait freeway driving. A small fan on the controller heat-sink helps a lot. 8/22/2012: I accidentally tore up my motor-transmission coupler. Luckily it didn't damage the transmission shaft spline. I put the flywheel and clutch back in for the time being, until I can build another coupler. It's drivable but now I have a loud vibration at certain RPM, caused by the flywheel on an unbalanced shaft. 9/25/2012: Fixed driveshaft issues. I also desulfated the bad batteries and am back to running on 120V again. Range is still only 30 miles and getting worse as time goes on. I hope I can keep it going until I finish my next EV (a Geo Metro 60% complete). 20 freeway miles (each way) is a long way to drive on an old pack. 12/15/2013: Vehicle has been retired. I now exclusively drive the Geo Metro EV. 5/23/2013: My wife drives a Nissan Leaf. we are a solar powered EV family. | ||||||||
| I love driving fast and only hearing the sound of the wind. Rule#1: Save energy and money without sacrificing convenience and luxury. WebPage | |||||||||
1992 Toyota Pickup - RETIRED
“Latoya”
Last Updated 11-27-2013
Copyright © 1997-2024 by Mike Chancey