rear caliper on disc

This is how the brake calipers will sit on the brake discs. 

Motor is by Jim Husted www.jimerico.net . The batteries will be charged with a Manzanita PFC40 charger. 

inboard rear discs

Inboard brake discs. The discs are 240 mm Suzuki Hayabusa rears and the calipers (not shown) are CBR900 honda. The viscous limited slip differential is from westgarage . The chassis is a sylva riot , batteries are High Tech Systems LLC - Derek Barger. The motor is a Netgain Transwarp 7 built by Jim Husted.

suspension assembled

Suspension Assembled

A 2D sketch of the belt drive, the belt tensioner is at the bottom, you can see the eccentric motion that tensions the belt. The smaller circle you see with the 240 diameter is the brake disc, which almost contacts the motor (5mm clearance)

The batteries are supplied by High Tech Systems LLC - Derek Barger, same supplier as Killacycle. This will be their definitive position, up against the seatback. They will work fine at any angle, as long as the cooling fans are pulling cool air from below and evacuating it above. The pulleys of the drive system are shown. The motor pulley is 22 tooth and the axle pulley is 112, for a 5:1 ratio. Top RPM of the motor is 7500 which will give about 140 km/h. The drive belt is a PolyChain Carbon. Given the torque I will be putting through the system (1 ton pull on the belt) this drive would simply not have been possible with the previous generation of belts which were kevlar based. Have you seen the motorbikes with drive belts, such as big harleys? Well, those were all designed for the kevlar belts. If you were to redesign them for the new generation of carbon belt (pulleys are the same) you could divide the belt width by half. This would make a harley look like it has a rubberband for transmission.

There is going to be a lot of machining work ahead to fit the driven pulley onto the differential.

Batteries, Motor, Frame

Here's the chassis with the batteries & motor in it

The chassis is a Sylva Riot

Hybrid generator - thanks to Brett at British Airways!

This car is going to be a hybrid, with an onboard series range extender generator. I've decided to start off with a very low power generator, the honda EU2000i, this gives 2000 watts. The car will use about 100 watt-hours of energy per kilometer, so running the generator gives you 20 extra kilometers per hour. In other words, you can drive all day if you only drive 20 kilometres in an hour. Note this does NOT mean 20 kilometers per hour speed! you might drive at 60 km/h for 20 minutes, stop at a café for 40 minutes - generator running, it's quiet-, and so on. Later I'm planning a stronger generator that recharges faster.

The generator will have to be modified to eliminate the inverter part - the internal rotor generates high voltage multi phase AC which is sent through a rectifier bridge to be used as DC by the inverter. In my case, I have a charger that accepts DC input (Manzanita PFC) so I will rewiring the honda generator to send the high voltage DC (about 200 volts) into the PFC.

The generator is made possible by Brett Payne at British Airways Dulles airport - you see, I was trying to take it from the USA to france (half the price in the USA compared to europe) but it was blocked by the Travel Safety Administration people because it had traces of fuel in it. Brett was awesome in taking it to Federal Express who shipped it back to a friend in the USA who is storing it for me while I figure out how to get it back (I'll probably just take it apart the next time I'm in the US, dry off all the pieces, and so make it OK for air travel). Thanks Brett! Fly BA/OpenSkies!!

The name of the blog is the maximum amperage that will get sent to the motor. Let's start with the motor. It's a series DC beauty, a Netgain Transwarp 7 prepared by Jim Husted with a custom variable timing ring. The timing in a DC motor should be zero at zero RPM, and 15 degrees advance at full RPM. Jim does not usually sign his motors, I asked him to do it for me because I'm a big fan of his race results: he built the motors in the worlds quickest electric vehicle, the Killacycle which does zero to 60 in 1 second... with 168 mph at the end of the 1/4 mile. Jim is also the nicest down to earth guy you will ever meet. My car is not going to be quite as quick as killacycle, I'm planning on 60 mph in 4 seconds and 80 mph top speed.

I'm going to document here the construction of an electric sports car.