The 24 Hours of Lemons Forums → Bench Racing → A Duff Beer Odyssey: Driving the electric car to CMP
I did lose 28 pounds, but that's it. Between now and RA, we plan in converging on it with reciprocating saws and cutting wheels, but there's no date on that yet. We also need to get the 3.69 diff out of it and get at least a 3.07 in it. With the turbo 5, the 3.69 just revs the hell out of it.
What I've discovered with trying to quiet down the picnic table, Is that the bulk of the noise is coming from the engine itself, and not out the exhaust. I've ran a long (aluminum) pipe off the stock muffler, through a car muffler, and finally through a motorcycle muffler. All I've managed to do is make a very hot piece of metal for people to burn their legs on. You can rest your ear right next to the final muffler and it's almost silent, but the table is only marginally quieter. Next step is a liquid cooled engine of some sort for less NVH.
I've ran a long (aluminum) pipe off the stock muffler, through a car muffler, and finally through a motorcycle muffler. All I've managed to do is make a very hot piece of metal for people to burn their legs on. You can rest your ear right next to the final muffler and it's almost silent, but the table is only marginally quieter. Next step is a liquid cooled engine of some sort for less NVH.
We learned, at least with a glasspak-style muffler, that stacking them does jack sh*t. We started out with a single Cherry Bomb on our Honda. It was too loud for our tastes so I added an additional one in-line. The sound level was exactly the same. We finally switched to a regular stock-type turbo muffler (and resonator) and it's now just a little louder than a factory exhaust.
That was a great story! It sounds like you had quite the adventure. One question/thought I had was can you put a car engine up front and load it with a bunch of alternators and put the electric motor in the back? It might give you more room for batteries and be quieter.
I don't think that would be practical, we'd need about 12 alternators, and then some major surgery to convert it to RWD. Then a lot of sketchy stuff would blow up or fly apart, killing every person on Earth.
At this point I think that we're going to go with a perverse devolution of the EV. We started with a pure EV that got 4 MPG, will transition to a hybrid that gets 15 MPG, and eventually convert it to gas and get 20+ MPG. The paradox should cause every Tesla car to immediately convert to burning coal. The brilliant part is that the car was originally built to use a Mk 1 Rabbit engine, which is really common, cheap, and a bolt-in swap for this car. Get a passenger side mount and bolt it to the 020 transmission that's already in the car and done.
Why use alternators, when you could just belt-drive one of these:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/2630988808 … dispItem=1
Why use alternators, when you could just belt-drive one of these:
That's what i'm talking about! Have it sticking out of the hood like a big super charger feed off the crank pulley.
One of you people should build an electric race car so we can race in class E. I have the original DC Forklift motor here with the original GE EV-1 controller and would be happy to donate them to a potential competitor.
The brilliant part is that the car was originally built to use a Mk 1 Rabbit engine, which is really common, cheap, and a bolt-in swap for this car. Get a passenger side mount and bolt it to the 020 transmission that's already in the car and done.
Since that's the case, I'd get an ALH out of a Mk4 jetta and get 50+. I helped swap a MK1 with one of those and it will get almost 60MPG around town driving like a complete asshole. It only gets about 40 running 80mph, but I'm convinced that's because it's still on 13's and it's screaming at that speed.
One of you people should build an electric race car so we can race in class E. I have the original DC Forklift motor here with the original GE EV-1 controller and would be happy to donate them to a potential competitor.
I might just take you up on that 
The 24 Hours of Lemons Forums → Bench Racing → A Duff Beer Odyssey: Driving the electric car to CMP