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We just could not pass up a
chance to own an electric car. |
This is a converted Ford Escort
1981 vintage |
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We just could not pass up a
chance to own an electric car. |
This is a converted Ford Escort
1981 vintage |
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| This is where the luggage and spare tire should be this is in Feb of 1997. | Feb 6, 2000, can you believe it, we just put in a new set of batteries and re-wired the car. Good for another 6 years or so. |
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This is where the luggage and spare tire should be
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same area, with the new batteries. I did have to do a little fiber glassing on the battery boxes, they had corroded through in a few spots. |
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this is a view into the left rear quarter panel. The black box on the left is the Curtis motor controller, the little gray box on the right is the 100volt to 12 volt DC to DC inverter. This allows us to run the headlights and such from the traction batteries. We still carry a 12 volt battery just in case. |
Well
look at this! here is Jim Price and myself with our twin electric
cars. Jenny and I have been driving BUZZ (ok, not very original,
but the only name I could think of) for several years now.
The more I drive him/her the more jazzed I get with this whole
electric car thing. It took a few months to get the bugs out of
the system, but now BUZZ is very reliable. I drive him/her to
BART everyday to go to work.
On the weekends I use him to get around, we have put over 2000
miles on him. It is a real mind blower to think that you can go
60 miles on energy stored up in the batteries, And no noise,
pollution, oil changes, gasoline... none of that stuff.
Some people will say that electric cars just aren't practical,
well that's just not true. If you stop and think about it for
running around town the electric is very practical, the 60 mile
range works out just fine for us. For longer trips we just use
one of our gas powered cars... no problem.
Well all that was written over two years ago, it is now
2/1/1999 and old buzz is still running on the original batteries,
boy did we luck out or what!. I suspect by the end of the year I
will have to put in new batteries, not that these are that bad,
but the seals around the battery posts are going bad, and I am
having to spend a lot of time cleaning off corrosion from the
cable clamps.
I have gone through 2 Curtis controllers in two years, they keep filling up with water and blowing up. In my opinion they should not be sealed up like they are, but should be allowed to breathe. I have drilled holes in my new one to allow free flow of air into the case, we will see if I am right. Well one and a half years later, and the controller is still running fine. Now it is 1/12/2003 and that same controller is running great, so I guess I was right about venting it.
As of today February 6, 2000 we have put 15,000 miles on Buzz.