| Owner | Alan | ||||||
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| Owner's Other EVs | 2010 Electra Cruiser Torker T510 Hybrid 1992 Nissan D21 Pickup 2002 Sol Gato II Husky Trike | ||||||
| Location | Baton Rouge, Louisiana United States map | ||||||
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| Vehicle | 1992 Ford Escort Wagon LX Originally donated to UCI in Irvine California, and converted to a hybrid as an engineering project. See WebPage | ||||||
| Motor | Advanced DC FB 4001 Series Wound DC ADC 9" motor with the shaft on both ends. I have my speed sensor mounted on the back shaft to drive the Tachometer. | ||||||
| Drivetrain | Original 5 speed manual with a ceramic clutch. | ||||||
| Controller | Cafe Electric Z1K-LV 1000 Amp Zilla Controller. Hairball interface has trouble codes and 2nd "Valet mode" settings for Amps, Volts etc. I am using the "Valet mode" as a second set of parameters to get better range when needed. | ||||||
| Batteries | 48 LFP-G60, 3.20 Volt, Lithium Iron Phosphate Originally had flooded lead-acid, but was upgraded to LiFePO4 in March 2014. Branded as AA Portable Power Corp (batteryspace.com). They're rebranding cells from China, but I don't know whose. | ||||||
| System Voltage | 154 Volts | ||||||
| Charger | Elcon 1500 | ||||||
| Heater | No longer needed. Had a ceramic core, but presumed to have been kept by original owner in AZ. | ||||||
| DC/DC Converter | Zivan NG1 120VDC to 12VDC | ||||||
| Instrumentation | Voltmeter, Ammeter, Speedometer, Tachometer, Curtis State of Charge Meter, Battery charger indicator light for onboard charger. SoC and voltmeter no longer work because of the jump from 120 V to 153.6 - I should fix that soon. | ||||||
| Top Speed | 70 MPH (112 KPH) Lost a little speed switching from huge lead pack to tiny LFP, but the increase in acceleration is WELL worth it. Motor and controller should be capable of 90 MPH. | ||||||
| Acceleration | 0-30 in 6s; 0-35 in 8s. Fully testing 0-60 could damage my batteries. Might post 0-40 time soon. | ||||||
| Range | 30 Miles (48 Kilometers) Original lead batteries had up to 50 mi with "tame" driving. New pack gets 30 mi with mixed highway and neighborhood. Average speed is around 35 with short periods of 50+ on my daily commute -all in second gear :) | ||||||
| Watt Hours/Mile | 307 Wh/Mile Despite differences in aerodynamics and weight, this car gets the same range as my '92 Nissan pickup. | ||||||
| EV Miles |
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| Seating Capacity | 5 adults. Actually had this many plus lots of baggage for Madi Gras this year (2014) and the car ran OK. | ||||||
| Curb Weight | 2,700 Pounds (1,227 Kilograms) With lead batts, it was stated to be 3460 lbs. Haven't re-weighed it but removed about 750 lbs of battery weight with LFP upgrade. | ||||||
| Tires | P185 60/R14 Riken Raptor- Kept at about 42 PSI | ||||||
| Conversion Time | Original: Elapsed time was about 1.5 years. I worked on it some days after work for a few hrs and on most weekends. About 4 months with no progress either waiting for parts or just me being lazy. I also had to replace some of the interior, and most of the wiring harness in the engine compartment needed to be replaced or repaired. Current: I've only spend about 2 weekends of time on this car to do replacements and upgrades. | ||||||
| Conversion Cost | Original est between $12-15K. I have put about $6k worth of upgrades after paying about $6k for the car. | ||||||
| Additional Features | Original owner: "It has a full front to back "belly pan". Originally I did this to improve aerodynamics, but it also keeps the engine compartment clean, and protects the battery charger that is mounted below the rear seat. The radio antenna and roof rack were removed and the roof smoothed for aerodynamics. The radio antenna was left inside the front pillar near the windshield - it works good." Current owner: Added a roof rack back. | ||||||
| Original owner: "I did drive to and from work daily starting 6-24-08, 5 days per week. It is 48 miles round trip. this lasted for about 6 weeks when the batteries failed due to using the onboard charger that was not quite fully charging the batteries. I found that you do need a good strong charger, (220 V high AMP), to keep your batteries happy if you discharge them to 80% often. My wife now uses the car daily to go to work and drop off the kids etc. It generally sees 16 to 30 miles a day, usually not more than 50% discharge. The 220 Volt Lester charger can fully charge the batteries from a 20 mile trip in about 3 hours. Fully balancing takes longer at very low amps." Current owner: I use this car daily to commute to work and run errands. Round trip commute is exactly 16.6 mi. So, adding in errands, I drive about 100 mi per week. I really miss air conditioning, so I sit on a phase-change cooling vest to take the edge off the heat. This works pretty well for the short trips this car makes. I bought this car after totaling my electric truck in Dec 2013. At the time, it was owned by a friend who I recently helped to install brand new lead-acid batteries. However, these batteries lasted less than 500 mi before one of the 15 exploded. Rather than replace the damaged lead-acid battery, I removed the whole pack and put in the LFPs from my truck. I lost overall horsepower and a little range, but acceleration still improved greatly because of the weight reduction. The remaining good lead batteries are now being used in a friend's solar powered house. Updates 2015-01-16, 19149 mi: Contactor would not close, no error code on Hair Ball (Zilla controller), stranded me at work. Turns out that one of the fuses that feeds 12 V power to the Hair Ball had a bad terminal. The terminal itself backed away from the fuse. Some pliers and a bit of elbow grease got it back in place. This is why I keep AAA membership. 2015-04-16, 20200 mi: No more problems since January except slow leak in one tire -plugged a hole but continues to seep 3 psi/wk around plug. Still have upgrades waiting to be installed: 144 VDC to 120 VAC @ 2 kW inverter and a 2 kW gas generator to be installed under the hood (for emergency recharging). With those upgrades in place, this car would make a great UPS when hurricanes take out the power grid. Just enough for the fridge, freezer, and some small appliances. 2015-10-22, 22204 mi: Installed the 144 VDC to 120 VAC, 2 kW inverter a few months ago and have used it for some light duty appliances. On 10/20, two of my 48 LFP cells failed. One swelled a lot and both dropped below 3 V at rest. It took all night but I swapped out the cells for two spares I had and balanced the pack again. The car is back on the road, but I am out of spare cells now. I hope no more cells fail before my plans to sell off the car in about 2 years from now. I am moving away from the city, so the car won't be useful to me at that point. If the buyer doesn't want to buy the used LFP cells with the car, then I will keep them and put them to work in some off-road vehicles. I also canceled my plans to upgrade the car with an on-board generator since I don't plan to keep it. 2015-11-13: MPJA.com started selling tiny 12 V digital thermostats for $6 including the probe. With one of these, I will try to upgrade the battery cooling fans soon and have them controlled by the thermostat - allowing me to put in much stronger fans since they will only run when needed. 2016-04-06, 24180 mi: Still working on the new cooling fan with thermostat mentioned above, but the bigger problem now is the decaying battery pack. I have needed to replace several cells in the past 6 months and it seems the rest of the original cells will fail soon. I hope they hold out for a few thousand more miles and then I will scrap the vehicle to support other projects. 2016-10-11, 25806 mi: The car still runs and I use it a few times a week, but the battery pack is less than half its original capacity. The cooling system is finished, but not helping much. Working on donating the car to a local school. If that falls through then I will scrap the car and sell the parts that I can. | |||||||
1992 Ford Escort LX Wagon
“Tofu”
Last Updated 10-26-2016
Copyright © 1997-2024 by Mike Chancey