Electric Conversion

[ChrisMinelli]

It occurred to me last weekend when I was out in the middle of nowhere pulling a fan blade off of an old flathead six that no longer even looks like an engine: eventually, whether 50 years or 100 years down the road there won’t be any more original parts left.  
 

Companies do make some replacement parts, but when was the last time you were able to buy a camshaft without having an old one to send in?  How about a generator off the shelf?  A distributor?  If your block cracked tomorrow, where can you find one that is in good enough shape to rebuild it?  Can you get all the parts to do so?

 

I guess my point is in the future there will be a day when there are no more flathead parts.  Do you figure out how to fit a slant six or a Ford / GM straight six in your car?  Do you try to convert it to electric?

 

Are there “crate engines” with electric batteries and motors to make vintage cars electric?  Any companies out there doing it?

[Ulu]

3D printing of iron. I keep praying.

 

[48Dodger]

"100 years from now, there won't be any part of me worth rebuilding.....oh but the stories I'll leave behind."   

                                                                                                                                   stuff 48D has said to his son 

 

Making horse carriages is a skill, a craft that goes on even today, thou those craftsmen are very few.

The same may be said of the guys who will choose to build vehicles from "back in the 20th century" with their "Iron Horse Replicator 2000".

Maybe just a few....but I'm still trying to help those building them now, with my large stash of L6 motors and spare parts.  

 

48D  

Edited August 4, 2021 by 48Dodger

[Kato659]

GM last year said they would be making "crate" electric conversion systems out of surplus Chevy Bolt guts.  That was before the fires, then GM's "fix" to the Bolt's programming, and the subsequent additional fires.  Radio silence since then...

 

My understanding was they would sell to an authorized shop that would do the conversion, rather than a hobbyist who might give himself 360V or burn his house down.

 

https://www.thedrive.com/news/37354/the-chevrolet-performance-ecrate-is-here-to-make-electric-drivetrain-swaps-easier-than-ever

[Ulu]

Putting out an electric car fire is not a trivial thing. My neighbor was a fire captain, and he told me that it could take 3000 gallons of water to cool off a burning Tesla.

[LazyK]

there are , and i'm sure will be more, companies doing electric conversions. one i saw recently was you send them your wheel base and track width with and they will build you a new frame with batterys and electric motor(s) installed. Take your body off your frame and set it on the new electrified frame. all wheel drive cranbrook?????

[plymouthcranbrook]

39 minutes ago, LazyK said:

there are , and i'm sure will be more, companies doing electric conversions. one i saw recently was you send them your wheel base and track width with and they will build you a new frame with batterys and electric motor(s) installed. Take your body off your frame and set it on the new electrified frame. all wheel drive cranbrook?????

Yeah, no.

[Plymouthy Adams]

I did a bit of a read on the Volt....seems the issues are many and mostly unknown.....for GM to sell a kit to a qualified shop to retrofit, that seems so very strange a statement/process given at this time and their latest software upgrades GM has not repaired the cars with issues.  This would not make for a warm fuzzy given the work involved, the classic car at risk and the out of pocket for loss.  Even the insurance companies as I read are really hitting that car with steep depreciation.  

[Ulu]

Until I talked to the fire captain about electric cars, I was about to look for a hybrid modern car to power my fiberglass kit car.

 

When he told me how much water it takes to cool down a burning Tesla, he said it doesn’t actually put out the lithium fire. It keeps burning till it’s nearly all consumed & all you can do is cool the surroundings as much as possible as it will ignite other plastic cars & even the asphalt road on fire.

 

One way this happens is if you drive over something that rips a gash in the floor of the car. At that point it will puncture some batteries and start a chain reaction were they catch each other on fire. When that happens people generally stop, or they eventually smell the plastic fire and they get out of the car alive.

 

The other way it happens is that a Tesla gets pinned between two heavier vehicles that cause it to buckle in the middle. This again breaks the battery pack open and starts a fire, but this time the doors could be jammed from the collision and you will have to break the glass and crawl out if you are still able.

 

Now to me, the gullwing Tesla looks like the doors will fly open if it buckled in the middle. but I’ve never seen a crash test of any of these cars.

 

I think that if you have an electric car like a Tesla, you are essentially sitting everybody on top of a big battery pack and hoping it never roasts them. Under-floor fire suppression should be mandatory along with onboard oxygen if necessary to survive the halon, foam, or whatever it takes to put out lithium.

 

Except, I think the problem is you simply cannot put out lithium. I think it’s like magnesium or phosphorus & once it starts to burn the only way to stop it is to get it so incredibly cold it stops by itself. I think we’re talking liquid nitrogen cold.

 

Somebody told me that salt water will stop the reaction and I don’t know if that is true. But fire suppression might be as simple as putting all the batteries inside a plastic box of salt water.

 

Anyone who has lived long by the seaside can tell you of horrid electrical corrosion problems, & will right away laugh at that idea!

 

These cars use a system of coolant pipes and a radiator to remove excess heat from the batteries when they are being used heavily. If that fails your floor is going to get hot quick in the car will shut down. In theory.

 

A Chinese company has come out with a different type of lithium battery pack that uses a different type of construction. It makes the battery easier to peel apart and disassemble and recycle, reduces heat concentrations, and it turns the entire battery pack into a big air cooled radiator. Also it makes the battery pack a system of structural I-beams that connect the frame of the floor together from side to side 100 times.

 

This is a big deal. If you don’t have a liquid cooling system, the car is a lot lighter.

 

 

 

Edited August 4, 2021 by Ulu