53.5? nice! yeah, parking
 

53.5? nice!

yeah, parking lots suck. i hosed down my car this weekend (first time since last fall) and also noticed a good sized scrape on the rear bumper that wasn't there before.

i'll go head over to your rusty thread now...

my friend and i still
 

my friend and i still haven't had a discussion about the rusty swift. i spent an hour poking around this afternoon, pulling the front carpet up, pulling loose rust off.

i can say this: good thing this car didn't have a stronger engine, or it would have pulled its own front end right off! okay, maybe not, but it's pretty bad.

at least now with the extent of the rust fully exposed, we can make a better informed decision.

I h8 rust, noooo! It's the
 

I h8 rust, noooo! It's the biggest fear in my life right now, :p

rust
 

I used to get under the car every Fall and spray the bare spots with undercoat - guess I should have hit the suspension area where it rotted out. The suspension arms were amazingly thin metal and needed a lot of coating to protect them.

After the first couple of days I had the xB I got in the garage and pulled each wheel off and sprayed every bare piece of metal in the wheel wells with undercoat - I can't believe they expect a bare brake line not to rust out in a few years when exposed to wheel well junk and spray from the roads. Oh yeah the owners manual expects me to power wash the underside weekly DUH!

Unrelated to Rust
 

Speaking of the engine breaking loose, a family member was driving her almost new '05 VW Jetta Automatic, stopped at a stop sign and BICKETY BAM! The engine blasted through the firewall on the passenger side. No joke. Luckily no-one was in the passenger seat or they would've had a broken foot/ankle/leg. The dealer towed it in, and was like, "Crap, another one". Turns out it was a faulty engine mount. I guess it's a common issue -- kinda scary.

RH77

Re: wow. i'd expect this car to
 

What year is your swift again? From what I've read you can easily part that thing out for a few hundred dollars on ebay. If you have a 96+ each rear view mirror can go for around $50. If your gauge cluster has a tach, that's another $70ish. Each price is USD, of course.

parts
 

Bet the gas shocks in the rear hatch are dead - I could use those. Never has a rear wiper for mine either.

Re: wow. i'd expect this car to
 

I'm tearing-up man. That Swift was (sniffle) such an inspiration.

Good luck parting it out. I saw one the other day and got to thinking -- how would the Ford Festiva handle the swap (too bad we don't get the Ford "Ka" over here, although they do sell them in Mexico). If millions of people can sneak across the borders, a Ford Ka could make it.

RH77

Re: wow. i'd expect this car to
 

deja vue! (deja lu?)

yeah, the festiva was another somewhat popular lightweight host car.

i'd do something more interesting if the opportunity arose. rust sucks! there are probably lots of cheap, dead, interesting, rust-free, lightweight cars to choose from in the southern US.

there's another metro sitting in someone's yard a couple of blocks away. i think it was retired recently from daily driver status to lawn ornament status. i'll go knock on their door tomorrow.

Re: wow. i'd expect this car to
 

Are you sure we don't live in the same neighborhood?

Hey I can cut holes in glass
 

Hey I can cut holes in glass but my brother has done it already - takes lots of water and a diamond bit. What I really could use is the suspension mount for the right swing arm . . . no wait that rotted out on yours too WAAAAAA! My gas shocks are at a point where they hold up the hatch if it is warm out - cold they come back down unless you wait a minute then it stays up - tricky devil sometimes decides to close a minute later and WHAM on the head.

That low rider is looking
 

That low rider is looking pimp, y0.

pimpin, yeah, mainly because
 

pimpin, yeah, mainly because it's sunk 3 inches into ruts in her yard!

Eeeeelectric blue! I think
 

Eeeeelectric blue! I think the color fits! :)

red
 

WOW looks like they let a lot of water onto the floor and rotted it out - carpet is plastic backed and water tight.

Re: Eeeeelectric blue! I think
 

you got the "eeeeee!" part right. too bad the red car didn't have the good floor! ah well, beggars and choosers, and all that.

jangeo - it looks like the rust came through from the outside first, but once water had a way in, the carpet wicked and held it and it spread like crazy.

outside
 

hummm came throught the floor did it . . . yeah the undercoat is not too thick in many places.

On a side note since I did not see a recent post with this topic . . . took a trip last night to Stamford CT and back to attend a meet. I got 40.1 mpg going down 41.3 coming back - just about all highway with some rain - really heavy at times. The xB handles pretty good in the highway but oddly it seems to turn into the side wind. It really feels weird driving on these roads now sitting up so high after so many years in a lower car on the same roads.

If you think a Geo Metro is
 

If you think a Geo Metro is low to the ground, you've never driven a Triumph GT6 or ridden in a Lotus Europa. Your head is right at the height of the bumpers of all those oversized trucks and SUVs on the road. It's comforting to know you can nail the accelerator to the floor if the need arises, and wake the dead with the engine roar while you're at it. People may not see you, but they'll certainly hear you.

low
 

my brother had a TR-3 and you could drag your knuckles on the ground if you stuck your arm over the door. your butt was almost on the floor. In the Geo I have looked up at the tops of tires on SUVs.

Midget
 

Had two MG Midgets...smallest/lowest cars I have ever had.

When I dropped my CRX 3" I
 

When I dropped my CRX 3" I felt like I was the lowest person in the world, loved it. Need to get my shocks in so I can drop back to 2.5 or so.

I know big cars are better, but...
 

This is completely random (as you know I tend to be), but has anyone considered a demolishion derby for vehicles like the Red Swift? Maybe it's the 4-years of living in the middle of nowhere and attending tractor pulls, but I yearn to experience a demo-derby. Big, rear-drive tanks are the norm, but what about a little maneuverable "firefly" with some un-drivable rust to buzz around the course and use the inertia to take out the opponents rad. Yeah, I have strange goals...

RH77

motor testing
 

Hey just wondering what those FL motors draw at 12 volts no load in amps.

good question.
 

good question. unfortunately, they haven't seen any juice since i pulled them out of the forklift.

and what would it tell you?

and.. while i'm in an inquisitive mood, what would i use to measure the current draw? my brother has an induction ammeter, but i think it's an AC unit. (does that matter?)

i love revealing my ignorance!

Re: good question.
 

The AC ammeter wont be much help if you are measuring DC. A clamp type meter would be easiest, just make sure you clamp over only the positive or negative, not both as they will negate each other.

I have a DC clamp meter collecting dust in my junk drawer. I would be happy to send it to Canada for a vacation if you are interested.

thanks for the offer,
 

thanks for the offer, krousdb.

my friend is an industrial electrician, so he may have access to the meters we need. but he does AC work almost exclusively, so i'm not sure. i'll let you know.

measurements
 

So you are building an electric car and know nothing about electric motors - god no wonder you are trying it - if you knew what I know you wouldn't even think of getting started. This is what keeps me from becoming successful. Anyway you need to measure the amps from the battery - a clamp on meter probably will not work unless it can measure DC current - most are only for 60 hertz AC measurements. If you have a shunt from the parts the rating on it indicates the voltage that develops across it when the amps are going through it. A 50amp 50mv shunt will generate 50 millivolts across it when 50 amps is flowing through it. If you have a DMM that has a 200mv scale like the $2.99 ones from Harbor Freight the lowest DC Voltage scale will show you up to 199.9 amps on the meter when connected to the shunt. Chances are the motor will draw about 5-20 amps but it will tell you how efficient the motor is and how much no load current it will draw. Which will tell you how much power you will loose driving around that doesn't get to the wheels.

test
 

Before eCycle would sell me a motor I had to prove that I knew what I was doing. Calculate torque gearing hill climbing ability etc. with fixed single speed gearing the design is much more critical. With the tranny gearing in your Geo(s) you should do ok.

had the flu this week, so
 

had the flu this week, so didn't get much done on the forkenswift project (or any project).

but... as of today i've sold enough stuff from the red swift that we've made our money back on it. (and there's still a perfectly good motor - with decent compression even - that nobody seems to want.) i think it's reasonable to expect that by the time i'm done parting out the unnecessary stuff from both cars, they will be "free" or pretty close.

Sweet, that's awesome. I
 

Sweet, that's awesome. I love when that happens for me, :p

A lot of stuff can be picked up for cheap and with a bit of effort parted for some reasonable money/parts you want.

This project is like, the best thing ever. You'll be the envy of the site pretty soon, Matt will have to make a chargelog, ;)

Re: Sweet, that's awesome. I
 

HAHA... That's not a bad idea. Is there a way to quantify how many Kilowatt hours are used to charge a char?

charge log
 

Hey you ever heard of a Kill-a-watt meter? It plugs into a regular outlet and measures amp hours, Kilowatt hours, voltage, frequency, amps, watts, power factor, volt amps, and time connected to the outlet.

Quote:but... as of today
 

Ebay.

Yup, the kill-o-wat meter is
 

Yup, the kill-o-wat meter is the bomb. I had it from when I grid charged the Prius to record kwh. Now I use it here and there to see how much juice things draw. I got it on ebay for like $25 shipped. The only caveat is that it is rated at 120V, 1875 watts. If you are using standard 12V chargers then you should have no problems.

chargelog. that's
 

chargelog. that's funny.

eventually if we want to truly compare our vehicles' efficiencies, we'll have to convert to common energy units. diesel will lose some of its apparent mpg advantage over gasoline, etc.

ebay the motor, eh? has anyone here ever shipped a motor? or received one shipped to them (you have, right matt)? i've specified preferred pick-up on teamswift - that may be part of why it hasn't sold (in addition to being the least desired motor in the suzukiclone pecking order after the 1.3 dohc and the 1.0).

thing is, i have no idea how to "package" it properly and would have to check international issues, since the buyer would probably be south of the border.

Re: Yup, the kill-o-wat meter is
 

i think we'd blow it up. even if we stick to automotive dumb 6A chargers on a 4 12v battery setup, that would be 120V x 6A x 4 chargers = 2880 watts. could do the calcs manually i suppose; just time how long we're charging for.

of course, then we have to debate whether to base calcs on total energy pulled from the grid or actual energy used that was stored in the batts...

Re: Yup, the kill-o-wat meter is
 

Methinks your calcs might be wrong. Is the 6A an input or output number. I think it is an output number. So 12V x 6A x 4 = 288W.

Edit: I just checked my 10A, 12V output charger. The input numbers are 120V, 1.9A. So 4 of these would be 120V x 1.9A * 4 = 912W. You could run eight 10A, 12V chargers off of one kill-o-watt meter.

Also interesting to note is
 

Also interesting to note is the conversion efficiency of 12V battery chargers.

Input: 120V x 1.9A = 228W
Output: 12V x 10A = 120W

Efficiency = 120/228 = 52.6%

Re: Yup, the kill-o-wat meter is
 

you're right. thanks for the correction.

and, what nasty charger inefficiency. very interesting. also, not surprising now that i think of how hot the charger gets when it's in use for any length of time.

better idea
 

If you are charging the 12 volt batteries in series in the EV then you are better off charging them with a single high voltage charger so you only get a diode drop power loss for one diode instead of many. I run a Variac/autotransformer rated at 20 amps through a 35 amp bridge directly to the battery and dial up the voltage and current for 3 or 4 - 12 volt batteries and run some Powercheq balancer modules between them to keep them balanced charged the same. This charger, although heavy to carry at around 30-35 lbs, get about 89-90% efficency which is just a little below (1-3%) the efficiency of the much more expensive chargers.