Cross-Slide wrote:



Someone in town did their own conversion, they took a small car and
removed the motor. Added a 21 horsepower diesel instead, with a 20
horsepower electric assist motor to the end of the diesel.

I got a donated VW Bug back about 1986, and bought a Kaylor adapter
and GE jet engine starter/generator. You mount the original flywheel
and clutch on the adapter, and install on the transaxle. I had to make
another adapter to hold the bayonet mount of the jet engine starter to
the Kaylor adapter. I got 4 90-AH deep-cycle trolling motor batteries.
I built a 13 A variable switching regulator to adjust field winding current.
The armature was just on-off, with resistive starting.
This all worked remarkably well, and I drove it around a little. The VW
body was WAYYYY too far gone to pass inspection, so I had no plates on the
thing, so I couldn't go very far. The plan was to make it a hybrid, with
a Honda 350 engine and a stratofortress 400 A generator. The stratofort
generator cranked the Honda engine really well, but I couldn't get it to
run worth a darn, probably needed a real rebuild. I also needed to come up
with a much more robust coupling between engine and generator. Also, the
GE motor, at full field current, was INSANELY noisy, a loud high whine.

I did get some decent data off it. I found I could putter around at 100 A
at 48 V, and could easily climb real hills at 30 MPH on 200-250 A.
I was actually surprised at the low power consumption. 250 A at 48 V is
just 12 KW, or 16 HP. I couldn't go above that to protect the batteries and
wiring.

Jon