Lightest car to convert?

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EVguru
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Postby EVguru » Fri Sep 26, 2008 10:02 am

bobc wrote:I'm converting a reliant kitten - they were pretty light (650kg ish from memory) & can be picked up reasonably cheap.
They were fairly ropey when new mind you, & will not have improved in the 30 odd intervening years.....
Doing up seems fairly reasonable though, parts seem easy enough to get.


Please check very carefully that the steel reinforcement that goes up the door pillars and provides the seatbelt mountings has not rotted out. This is quite common and is sometimes VISUALLY repaired (like re-wiring a house by replacing the last foot to the socket).

The lower wishbone ball joint can be a problem. They go slack (even when new) when the car is up on stands and fail the MOT. You need an MOT tester old enough to remember Vauxhall Chevettes (or even Vivas) or persuade them to get the testers' manual out. I've sucessfully rebuilt them if the play really is excessive. The last time i tried to buy one, they were about £100 each because Reliant were only having them made in batches of 10.
Paul

http://www.compton.vispa.com/scirocco/
http://www.morini-mania.co.uk
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bobc
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Postby bobc » Fri Sep 26, 2008 12:00 pm

Too right Paul, the bottom 2ft of my B pillars were made of square tubular rust & the front was a mess. I welded new B pillar bottom halves on & made new wishbones using herald top balljoints and alfa 164 bottoms, and got the chassis galvanised - it all looks rather nice now!Image

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Postby ChrisBarron » Wed Nov 26, 2008 2:01 pm

I am going for the big Reliant, the Scimitar.
I've waited for a while for the right one but now I have just bought this one
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... 0275573199


Looks to have a good chassis.

They weighed in at 1050kg (ish) but you can lose 250kg+ without too much trouble by ditching the V6 engine and gearbox. The chassis is strong and can support a lot of the lead batteries I already have. There's a nice central tunnel to put the battereis in if I manage to get my motor to mount up at the rear , almost directly to the differential. The bodywork is fibreglass so is rot free, and hopefully isn't too heavy.

I got it for so little that I have got to give it a go

MalcolmB
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Postby MalcolmB » Wed Nov 26, 2008 2:47 pm

Well done Chris, you can't complain at that price, especially if the chassis turns out to be as good as it sounds. Should make a cracking conversion, with a little bit of work :wink:

Have you got a motor for it yet? Any projected performance figures? Or will this be an 'organically evolving' project?

Malcolm

ChrisBarron
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Postby ChrisBarron » Wed Nov 26, 2008 3:22 pm

MalcolmB wrote:Well done Chris, you can't complain at that price, especially if the chassis turns out to be as good as it sounds. Should make a cracking conversion, with a little bit of work :wink:

Have you got a motor for it yet? Any projected performance figures? Or will this be an 'organically evolving' project?

Malcolm

Thanks Malcolm.

The car was the laxt thing on the shopping list !

I spent my time buying everything else first before I choked up the drive with a car which needed a bit of this or some of that !
I was going for either a big pickup 4x4 which I was considering making an electric rear axle for, or a Scimitar. The Scimitar came first !

The batteries are ex-UPS (collected over 16 months), Yuasa 160AHr, I've got about 160V worth. The motor (bought 18 mths ago) is ex-milkfloat, and was listed on ebay as a 15kW motor but that seems too high to me.

I have a 400Amp Curtis something_or_other for up to 60V, and two ex electric vehicle SCR drives, and some replacement SCRs rated for 2000Amps at 400V. (low frequency rectifier types,sadly)

I've several contactors, various coil ratings, 24V, 48V and 72V, all high current.

I'm working on my 4th year honours project at the moment so things will be slow at first, but that project is to make some machine monitoring and interweb reporting hardware via a wireless connection, and I'm currently working on the HMI which includes programming a microcontroller to use cheap 128x64 pixel graphical LCD displays, so there's my dashboard now too !

I've got an old 72V charger which is working well at 30Amps output, and another 30Amp 24V transformer if I need to use that too.

Plenty to play with, probably the only thing I don't have much of is time !

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Postby ChrisB » Wed Nov 26, 2008 6:33 pm

Loving your work there Chris and BobC looking forward to the in and outs of the builds 8)

ChrisB
I reject reality and substitute my own !!!!!!

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Jeremy
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Postby Jeremy » Wed Nov 26, 2008 7:24 pm

I owned one of these back in the early eighties and did a fair bit of work on it. Things to watch are the integrity of the front body, as engine fires were fairly common due to a bit of poor fuel system design. Many Scimitars have dodgy bonnet repairs as a consequence of having had a carb fire.

The rear axle is a well-known weakness, as it wasn't really up to taking the torque from the V6. It's usually a Salisbury unit though, so is easy to get rebuilt. The front suspension is early Triumph, bushes etc are the same as the old Triumph 2000. The gearbox is usually pretty reliable, but the electrically actuated Laycock overdrive unit tends to fail, again it wasn't really up to the torque from the V6, plus had the added problem of no interlock with the gears - overdrive could remain on in low gears, leading to near-instant overdrive unit cone clutch failure.

The interior is cr*p, no other word can describe how simply awful the interior trim was. Even relatively new Scimitars suffered from trim coming unglued etc. The main advantage of the very amateur, DIY standard, interior is that is can be rebuilt by a determined DIY'er from ordinary materials like timber, foam and sheet vinyl. The challenging bit might be rebuilding the rear bucket seats, they are an unusual design and look to be pretty difficult to replicate if they are missing.

Although that old V6 is a heavy lump, the whole car is built a bit like a tank and isn't very light for it's size. The chassis looks like it wouldn't be out of place on a small truck. According to my old workshop manual, the empty weight was actually 2440lbs, so a bit over 1100kg. I'd guess that the fibreglass bodywork was actually heavier than steel, as it's pretty crudely made and massively thick. It also has steel members moulded in at critical places. I don't doubt that the car would take a fair weight of batteries though, as it always seemed over-engineered structurally.

Don't expect decent handling. Even nearly new the handling was bloody awful - more akin to a 1960's saloon than anything with "sporting" pretensions. This isn't surprising, as all the running gear was derived from 1960's type cars.

You can probably find all the parts you might need for the running gear by finding the list of "donor" cars and then looking at classic car specialist suppliers. I'm reasonably sure that the owners club know were all the bits come from, virtually nothing on the car was special - even things like door handles and lights came from another manufacturers parts bin.

This should be an interesting project - good luck!

Jeremy

ChrisBarron
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Postby ChrisBarron » Wed Nov 26, 2008 7:34 pm

Jeremy wrote:I owned one of these back in the early eighties and did a fair bit of work on it. Things to watch are the integrity of the front body, as engine fires were fairly common due to a bit of poor fuel system design. Many Scimitars have dodgy bonnet repairs as a consequence of having had a carb fire.

The rear axle is a well-known weakness, as it wasn't really up to taking the torque from the V6. It's usually a Salisbury unit though, so is easy to get rebuilt. The front suspension is early Triumph, bushes etc are the same as the old Triumph 2000. The gearbox is usually pretty reliable, but the electrically actuated Laycock overdrive unit tends to fail, again it wasn't really up to the torque from the V6, plus had the added problem of no interlock with the gears - overdrive could remain on in low gears,
Jeremy


Thanks for the tips.

In the photograph the bonnet appears to have some string or somesuch coming out on top, which may be just to release the catch, or it may be to make up for fire damage. Won't know for sure till it arrives here.

As for the overdrive, if it had one, I was thinking maybe I could get away with no gearbox at all and just drive the axle through the overdrive, assuming the diff is geared up enough, but I'll have to wait till it's here before I count gear teeth and so on.

Thanks for making the point about nothing being special on it, that's very encouraging as far as finding parts is concerned, and I'll get onto one of the owners forums as soon as I can.

ChrisBarron
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Postby ChrisBarron » Wed Nov 26, 2008 7:37 pm

ChrisB wrote:Loving your work there Chris and BobC looking forward to the in and outs of the builds 8)

ChrisB


Thanks Chris.

Didn't want to spoil Bob's day, but I actually think I have spotted a speck of dirt on that immaculate chassis ;-)

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Postby MalcolmB » Wed Nov 26, 2008 7:58 pm

ChrisBarron wrote:Didn't want to spoil Bob's day, but I actually think I have spotted a speck of dirt on that immaculate chassis ;-)


I noticed that as well, thought the chassis was holed at first, but it must be muck. Shocking eh. :P

Just noticed the belt drive as well. Nice. Can you tell me what width/pitch that is Bob and where you got the bits?


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