The Demise of my diesel

[Edison]

Hi everyone,
My little white diesel of hope (as opposed to my little red car of death, named by loon) is most likely dead i think..
It had oil in the water forever, suggesting a cracked head or gasket, and it's finally failed, preceeded by a vaying idle speed, and difficulty idling when cool. (it had to be held up with the pedal, and would do the up and down by itself thing) the varying idle speed was at about 1 or 0.5 Hz or so.
Now after a bit of a roll down the long hill to start it, the water is unreasonably pressurised, and can spit some out if opened...
anyhoo, looking at the cost of a gasket/head and all, i think i may be better off heading towards the brighter horizon of an electric (100%) vehicle. I have a 3hp motor ! 8-) 36v maybe i can ssqueeze out more than 3hp peak,... and I think i may be able to get a bigger one from america, I can get a good battery bank, and will need to go onto the electronics forum for help with the controller...
In a Vw? of course, maybe the little white one, ideally, one I don't have which would be is it a t3? a vw bus i saw the other day it was Sooo big inside and hey it was Vw! 8-)
Ed.

[Golf Loon]

sad to hear of the demise Mik.
Sharkey has posted on herre a few times, he has an electric powered golf in the US.

[brackie]

Fix the head!

Sharkey has posted on here a few times, he has an electric powered golf.......

But it has a lot more that 3hp My God, in 1927 the Austin 7 had over twice the power! And Mr Sharkey's rig is a hybrid that tows the front half of a diesel Rabbit to charge the batteries up.

Get the tool kit out mate......Fix the head. We don't want another 1.5 diesel motor going to the tip

[Golf Loon]

Yeah at least fixing the head is achieveable. Rip it off and I`ll hook you up with a cheap head reco mob and plenty of help available on here

[syncro]

Go and see Ron at C & S, Padstow and see if he has any second hand bits laying around.

[smithy010]

If you're going to go down the road of a fully electric golf, check out www.electroauto.com
They have a full kit for conversion of a golf to fully electric (about 70miles range).

And if you're going to sell your diesel parts, make sure you sell them here!

[brackie]

Pricey!

Wow!!!! You could buy a lot of diesel for the price of a kit for a Rabbit!

Voltsrabbit Kit$7,995.00

That's USD so it translates into ~AUD10,000

I reckon a new head and other bits and bobs would be a little bit cheaper

[syncro]

You don't build electric cars for economic reasons.

[peter_j_g]

It could be just the head gasket, I've had the same happen on two different VW diesels and in each case the head wasn't damaged, only a new gasket was needed.

Certainly worth lifting the head to see what's happened...

[Golf Loon]

Yeah Mik, pull the head off. Its up to you now.

[Edison]

I get depressed sometimes ( a dying GLD will do it to anyone ), and so opening it up takes me ages. Plus where is difficult, as I have no garage, just the roadside, which is ok cause the car is rego'd. I wanted the head off but only got as far as the top timing belt covers, the bottom cog is still covered, looks hard to get at.
the electric motors can be overloaded to about 10x their continuous rating for normal driving it seems and the 3 is 2.25 i had another look, i always forget, so it's like 20hp or so which is a lot of old cars... enough for an experiment anyhow...
the batteries are no problem and taken care of already, except for the specialist computer design for charging individual cells.
The electric conversion is for economy in this case, it saves about $50,000 + over a 10 year lifespan. although yes, electric cars are usually built for enviromental or racing reasons (an electric beats any petrol on quartermile type races, because of the smooth torque curve and megawatt engines)
Still that bottom cover for the timing belt, how do i get that off without feeling around by hand (it is like SOO messy down there, the whole engine needs serious degreasing, hard to do when i can't move it).
Ed.

[Edison]

If you're going to go down the road of a fully electric golf, check out www.electroauto.com
They have a full kit for conversion of a golf to fully electric (about 70miles range).

That's way too expensive an option, I'm more going to be stumbling over the registration and engineering certification i think, i don't know what is involved. The motor, I have a small one 2.25hp cont, so about 20hp peak, and batteries on the way and controller/charger will take some building by me. Mounts i'll make at tafe.
I'll also head for a 400+kms range, or at least 200 to start, that won't be too hard to do.

And if you're going to sell your diesel parts, make sure you sell them here!

If it comes to that I'm sure loon can find good homes for them, if not me.

[Edison]

Here is a site, I think the datsun goes from 0-60 in 3.5 seconds, i think it might be MPH not kph
plasmaboyracing

[smithy010]

You've got little chance in getting 400km range. Say if you've got 2kW of motor, then to run for an hour at 60kph (assuming 2kW is enough to do this,-which it isn't) would take 2kWh, which at 24V is 83Ah- so you need about 50kg of batteries just to do this.

I've done the drag calc, and it appears you need about 7-10hp to keep the car at 60-85kph.

so if we redo the calc for say, 7hp (5.25kW), you need 218AH to run for an hour.

These calcs are only representative, because the current would be way too much for a 24V supply at 7hp- more practical to run at 96-120V.

Also, when you calculate costs over a 10 year period, you would need to factor in a cost for at least i'd say 2 new sets of batteries.

There are big problems with EV's today, and i tend to agree with people's past posts in that you don't make an EV for an economic reason.

[Golf Loon]

stop dreaming and fix the damn diesel. can you get it out here? although i have never pulled the head off a diesel. degreaser is $2 at supercheep, good investment