Electrovair III - High Voltage Hot Rods

[HighVoltageHotRods]

I just wanted to take a moment to introduce myself. My name is Andrew McClary and I am the owner of High Voltage Hot Rods and host of a new television series currently in production called High Voltage Hot Rods. We just completed work on a 1966 Corvair Monza convertable which we are calling the Electrovair III. Named in the spirit of the Electrovair I and II which were built in the 60's by GM using the Corvair. Our Electrovair III now has an all electric drive system capable of up to 80 miles range on a single charge and performance which exceedes the stock Corvair engine. Its quiet and smooth and delivers a great ride. Check out the car at http://highvoltagehotrods.com/hvhr-gets ... -the-road/ and lots of production photos on http://www.facebook.com/highvoltagehotrods.






I hope you guys find our project interesting.

[Scott H]

Welcome Andrew and thanks for sharing your project with us. Allot of us have been following your progress on facebook and the website. The car looks great.

[bbodie52]

Welcome to the Corvair Forum! I have been monitoring and commenting on your Electrovair III project for some months now on Facebook, and have been forwarding your Electrovair III Facebook material to the CORSA (Corvair Society of America) Facebook page. I have been trying to encourage a discussion regarding the Electrovair III project and its pros and cons among Corvair enthusiasts. I was surprised and pleased to see you opening a dialog on the Electrovair III here on the Corvair Forum.

I have been involved with Corvairs in my family since 1961, when I was nine years old. Some of my Corvairs, past and present, are shown below. I do much of my own mechanical work and was an electronics technician in the Air Force for 24 years, and a computer technician and network administrator after I retired from the Air Force. I have been intrigued by the Electrovair III to the point where I would possibly consider wanting to build such a conversion, so I am looking forward to the prospect of further dialog and possibly Q & A posts here on the Corvair Forum. Although I don't know if there would be any interest, I have been proposing an idea for CORSA to possibly extend an invitation to your firm to see if there would be interest in displaying the Electrovair III at the CORSA national convention next summer in Kalamazoo, Michigan. I felt that, properly promoted, the presence of the Electrovair III in Michigan at the annual CORSA convention might produce media interest that would be of benefit to your organization and to CORSA. In any case, I again want to extend a welcome to you and I hope that your presence on this Forum produces an interesting and informative conversation regarding electric Corvairs and electric cars in general.




1965 Corvair Corsa Convertible 140hp 4x1 - Spring 1980 - Base Housing - Hanscom AFB, MA, just before we shipped it to Germany. (This is the same Corsa shown above in 1965, when it was Mist Blue and I was 12.)


My 1965 Chevrolet Corvair Corsa coupe with 140 hp engine. Photo taken in front of my parent's home in Thousand Oaks, California in 1981, just before we began a long journey to Lake Tahoe, and then Bayonne, NJ to ship the car to West Germany.

[sam60]

Excellent engineering and craftsmanship! Thanks for putting it in a Corvair.

[HighVoltageHotRods]

I was familiar with a lot of the Corvair components because of my work with the EV GT-40 which is a Fiberfab Valkyrie that uses the Corvair steering, transmission, and suspension. When Larry Mills asked me to do a Corvair, we jumped at the chance. The Corvair really is a great platform for this. Its simplicity and the engine compartment worked out real well. The automatic Powerglide transmission has really worked out great as well. It really is giving a smooth ride. We idle the motor at about 100 rpm when the car is turned on so that the torque converter pump works to give you a smooth take off. We are still testing and working with the settings to find the best RPM and settings to give the best ride.

The AC50 motor is a great setup for a daily driver and works well. Larry wasn't looking for speed but just wanted it "peppy" which it is. I used a Warp 9 DC motor in my EV GT-40 though which really made it a true sports car. The same motor could be used in the Corvair if you really wanted a fast car.

I am currently working on installation instructions and drawings for a kit that we will be selling. Of course if you don't want to do the work yourself, anyone can send us their Corvair and we can do the conversion in our shop. The price tag on the setup that we did for Larry with labor is right around $30k. Of course he will never have to spend money on gas again for this car. Our kit will be much cheaper if people want to put in their own labor.

I will try to post some more specs and data on the car as we start to get results from our testing here on this forum. I try to keep our facebook posts pretty light, but I am guessing you guys can take the heavy numbers stuff better here.

The Corvair was a big hit at the Palm Beach Super Car show. It attracted a lot of attention.

Thanks for the welcome.

Andrew McClary
High Voltage Hot Rods

[bbodie52]

Thanks for the continuing updates. I was in fact curious how the Powerglide transmission performed if the electric motor came to a full stop when the car is stopped. Keeping the motor at a slow "idle" to keep the automatic transmission "alive" explains how that was handled.

Does the high capacity Warp 9 DC motor use increased battery energy during normal driving, or does it only draw more current under heavy throttle conditions? How does the choice of the Warp 9 DC motor affect maximum driving distances, performance, and the initial cost of this motor vs. the AC50 motor?

What charging station options can be used with the Electrovair III system? Can it be charged with only 110VAC available? What are the recharge cycle times for each charging station option?

How was passenger compartment heater/defroster needs dealt with? How does the use of standard 12VDC accessories, such as headlights, sound system, windshield wipers, etc. impact the maximum driving distances between recharges? I read that the control system protects the system from excessively discharged batteries. Does the system include some warning for the driver before the protective circuits shut down the motor?

[bbodie52]

1966 Corvair Electrovair III Conversion Kit

Just recently posted on the Web by High Voltage Hot Rods...
http://www.highvoltagehotrod.com/store/ ... 78j8c5uq46

$11,291.00

Model: ac50corvair
Shipping Weight: 350lbs
10 Units in Stock
Manufactured by: High Voltage Hot Rods

1966 Corvair AC Conversion Kit
(May fit other year Corvairs with some modification. Tested on a 1966 Monza.)

This is a complete kit including all of the major parts, brackets, adapters, motor, and controler to do a conversion. Other stores offer kits but leave many out many important and expensive components. Our kit is complete. Just add batteries.

The AC50 system is a great system for daily drivers. It provides more power and torque than the original stock Corvair motor and includes features such as regenerative braking. The performance curves and how the car drives can be easily modified by reprogramming the controler with the optional hand held programming unit. The controler comes pre-programmed from our shop with the settings we have found work best.

This kit will include:

96-120 Volt Curtis AC Speed Controller
Main contactor
Moto Adapter to Powerglide Automatic Transmission
Motor Mounting Bracket
Motor Coupler - AC50 to flex plate
Steel Battery Box Mounting Rails for engine compartment- Requires welding in
Plans for battery boxes
High Voltage Shielded Cable and connectors
Digital Voltage and amp hour meter
Battery Charger
Elcon PFC 5000 Charger
J-1772 Public Charging Plug
Complete multimedia instructions including video and photos

[bbodie52]

How Far Will it Go?

This article is one of a series of question and answer sessions produced by High Voltage Hot Rods and published on their Web site. To try to maximize visibility among Corvair enthusiasts, I am transcribing the article to this forum on the Corvair Forum

One of the first questions we get is, “how far will it go on a charge?” The answer to that question is it depends on what battery pack we put into the car. It all comes down to how much energy you carry and how much weight you are pushing. There are some other factors like wind resistance and rolling resistance as well. There are some rules of thumb that people in the industry have found that usually hold pretty true most of the time for any average car*. You can kind of guess how much energy you are going to need by taking the car's weight and dividing it by 10. This will give you the number of watt hours that you are going to need to drive 1 mile.

Lets take a look at this rule of thumb and apply it to a car. Say the car you want us to convert for you weighs about 2800 lbs. Another rule of thumb is that once we take out all the internal combustion stuff (ICE) and put in the electric stuff and batteries, its going to be about 200lbs more weight. (I know this isn’t accurate, its just a rule of thumb.) So we are looking at a vehicle with a curb weight of about 3,000 lbs. We divide that by 10 so we get 300. So its going to take us about 300 watt hours to go 1 mile. That means to go 100 miles on a single charge we are going need 100 x 300 =30,000 or 30 kwh of energy. That means a 30kwh battery pack.

Now if our system is going to be a 300 volt nominal system, that means that we are going to need 100 ah batteries cells to go 100 miles. Since each lithium cell is about 3.2 volts, we need about 94 cells to make a 300 volt pack. Therefore our pack to make this 3000lb car go 100 miles is going to be made up of 94 – 100ah lithium cells.

The question you need to ask yourself when looking at an electric car is “How far do I need to drive?” Don’t answer this one with emotion. Do a test. Zero out your trip odometer each morning and then write down how far you went. Do this for 2 weeks. Now take a look at what your daily driving habits look like. Most people find that they drive less than 40 miles in any average day. The exceptions being of course when they go on a trip somewhere. There are some, like myself who have found themselves commuting to work driving 30-40 miles each way. To figure out how far you really need, take the numbers you found in the above test and add 15% for the occasional detour and then add another 15% for degradation of the battery pack over time. This means our average drive really only needs to go about 52 miles to handle about 95% of his driving. So if we create a car that will do 100 miles on a charge, he is buying way more than he really needs. Since the biggest cost in the whole electric car equation is the batteries, his easiest way to cut costs is by agreeing to a smaller battery.

Next week we will look at the second question everyone asks -”How long does it take to charge?”

*Jack Rickard from EVTV.me has made this rule of thumb famous on his weekly show. Please don’t give me credit for it. It is a pretty good rule of thumb and I thank Jack for it.

http://highvoltagehotrods.com/how-far-will-it-go/

[Corvana]

Hello - recently came across this project and wonder if anyone knows what happened to High Voltage Hot Rods? Did they ever produce their conversion kit, which utilizes the Powerglide transmission? Unfortunately, it seems as though they are no longer in business.