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Currently we have four electric cars, all converted gasoline models: a 1979 Honda Civic, a 1985 Ford Tempo, a 1991 Geo Metro, and a 1994 Geo Prizm.Currently our Civic and Tempo are in working order and available for members to drive, while the Prizm and Metro are both “works in progress.” If you are at Caltech, you can probably drive these cars! Well, you can drive two of them and tinker with the third.
We acquired this car from Bob Hadden, when he was selling his EV conversion shop Voltage Inc. in Torrance, CA. It's a converted four-door 1985 Ford Tempo with a five speed manual transmission. Its 128 volt battery pack consists of fifteen eight volt Trojan lead acid batteries strung together in series. We swiped these batteries from the Metro after its original 120V pack (twenty six volt Trojan T125 lead acids in series) bought the farm. A 400 amp Curtis 1221B controller regulates the current to the General Electric DC motor, and a Servicon DC/DC converter keeps the 12V accessory battery juiced up. The charger is a genuine custom Berkun piece, made by our very own Science Officer Andy Berkun. It's got modified coil springs on its beefed-up front suspension to support the car's increased weight. An E-Meter range indication system displays the voltage, current, amp-hours, and estimated state-of-charge for the driver.
The Tempo's range hasn't been measured with its new battery pack, but 50 miles is as good a guess as any. It's a nice car.
Our little teal 1979 Honda Civic wagon was brought online at the end of the summer in 1999, thanks to generous grants from the Caltech Student Investment Fund and AlliedSignal. "Baby Blue" was purchased from LA's Rocky Moss for five bucks sans batteries, cables, or controller, so club members worked together that summer to fix her up. It's a four door, although the back seat is taken up by a battery box. It has a four speed manual transaxle made for the old four cylinder Honda CVCC engine, so it's geared rather low for its DC motor, leaving it with a top speed of about 60 mph downhill with a tailwind. Being so light and geared so low, it's got one heck of a kick for such a light-duty EV, so it's loads of fun to drive. Baby Blue's got a 96 volt battery pack, with eight big 12V Trojan 5-SH lead-acid batteries supplying the juice. Six of these batteries were salvaged from the rear bank of the Paseo after its engine compartment caught fire (see below). The other two were bought from Battery Systems in Los Angeles. Five Trojans live in the back seat battery box, and the other three are squeezed into the front engine compartment.
We've learned a lot from the Civic. When we first got the car running in 1999, we received a slew of used GM EV-1 sealed lead-acid batteries in varying conditions. On a couple occasions we've overcharged the batteries, boiling off some of the water in the electrolyte as free hydrogen and oxygen. Since we couldn't add water to the batteries, we thought we were up a creek when our supply of usable EV-1 batteries began to dwindle. The range began to falter, and the car became a pain in the butt to drive. Fortunately, our Science Officer Andy Berkun came to the rescue with his "Frankenbattery" idea. He drilled two holes above the six cells in each twelve volt battery, and injected deionized water very, very carefully with a squeeze bottle. Overfilling the battery could have resulted in a short, since the EV-1 batteries have a raceway above all the cells for capturing the hydrogen and oxygen gas to regenerate water. So, the batteries had to be tilted to see the faint waterline as we filled the batteries up. Believe it or not, this technique worked rather well for a few months, and really breathed life back into the tired old cells. Eventually, though, refilling worked less and less, and we put the Trojans in there. When we did that, we learned one more thing: one must make sure the connecting cables are TIGHT on the battery post, or the battery will overheat due to increased resistance and burn a hole in the thing to render it useless. Yes, this happened to us, and it was a $150 mistake. But the burnt out battery was quickly replaced, and now the Civic is zipping along better than ever.
news on the Metro will soon appear here..
news on the Prizm will soon appear here..
The Paseo finally left us for better worlds last year. Long live the Paseo.
(Our first electric car was donated to Caltech by the estate of Disney CEO Frank Wells. It is a converted Toyota Paseo, normally parked on the second level of the Holliston parking structure by the southwest staircase. Here's a picture (45Kb JPEG) of screwing the plates on.)
