Monday, April 7, 2008

Switching Gears and Moving On

With almost 3000 miles of cheap, reliable operation, I think it's time to move on to something that will help more people do their own conversions. I really appreciated the high-quality parts and detailed instructions provided by Electro Automotive with their 914 kit. I would like to see the same thing done for a more modern, practical vehicle for much less cost.

You probably won't see much more activity on this blog in the upcoming months as I focus on developing an open-source EV kit for a '92-'95 Honda Civic. I invite you to come along for the ride over at civic-ev.blogspot.com

Thanks to everyone who has offered their support and knowledge during the 914 conversion. I hope this blog has helped many people convert their own 914s and save them time.

Cheers,
Tim

10 comments:

onei57 said...

Thanks for all you help and good luck with the new project. I'll watch along! Matt

Ross Cunniff said...

Tim, thanks for this fantastic blog. It is the one that gave me the idea to blog, too (do something useful with all those pictures I was taking). And your help has been invaluable. Let me know if I can help your Open EV initiative in any way!

TimK said...

Hi Matt and Ross,

Thanks for the well wishes. If you'd be willing to subscribe to the posts at the new blog (like you've done with this one) and give me a reality check from time to time, that would be most welcome. I perceive this may be a bigger project than I expected, especially if I have to organize a bunch of contributing members. Someone at an OEVA meeting said it was like "herding cats" sometimes. We'll see. Cheers, Tim

Doug Teeple said...

Tim,

What a great site! I particularly appreciate how you explain and come to grips with problems. I recently did a '72 Karmann Ghia. I had a lot of the same issues. I did an interesting PDA interface to the paktrakr. I also did a solid state turn signal replacement to support my LED signal lights. Have a look:

http://ev/dougandtomo.com

Doug

Doug Teeple said...

Ooops...

http://ev.dougandtomo.com

Doug

Unknown said...

Hi Tim, I spoke with Craig at Camp 914 today and he suggested I contact you. Shoot me an email when you have a chance, jr@nwlink.com. Cheers, James

Unknown said...

Tim, Where is the civic blog? Will you be keeping the clutch?

thank you for the open source information!

TimK said...

Hi Daniel,

As mentioned in the post, the blog is at http://civic-ev.blogspot.com If you look at the discussions listed at the Google Group there, we've decided to keep the clutch for a variety of reasons. Hope you can join us. Tim

Anonymous said...

Tim,
Thanks for sharing all of your experiences with your 914 conversion. I'm in the research phase of doing an EV conversion and I wanted to confirm with you the range that you are getting with your 914...have you gotten 100+ miles on a single charge?
Thanks...
Michael

TimK said...

Hi Michael,

The specs on the ElectroAuto site for the AC kit are vastly overstated. The very top speed on level ground is 70-75 mph and I can get a maximum of 50 miles on a charge before the batteries start dying. Nope, nowhere close to 100+ miles. Of course, I got 50 miles driving 50 mph. Perhaps if I drove out in the desert on completely flat ground at 20 mph I could get 100 miles, but that's rather impractical. Cheers, Tim