Electric Motor Conversion

[Nikon Samurai]

Does anyone have any information on doing this? I almost have my 22r rebuild finished, but I've been thinking an electric motor might be the way to go, since I will never need to go beyond 45mph...

So questions are as follows...

Where should I look for a proper electric motor? I was happy with the power I had from the stock 22R
What kind of power source would I need for it to last 2 days on a charge?
Where can I get some good reference info to read through and figure some of this out for myself?

I am a mechanical engineering major at Boise State uni, and I now they've done a conversion on an 80's Tercel (I think) Wagon, I'll be stopping by there to ask questions this week...

Any info is appreciated <3

 

[Hayes85]

The problem you are going to run into is charge longevity. I mean, Chevy has an electric car that goes 45 miles on a full charge, and they have almost unlimited resources. I'd be interested to find out what you come up with, but electric motors don't stay charged for long.

 

[Nikon Samurai]

The problem you are going to run into is charge longevity. I mean, Chevy has an electric car that goes 45 miles on a full charge, and they have almost unlimited resources. I'd be interested to find out what you come up with, but electric motors don't stay charged for long.

I guess the good news is then that I have a whole 6' bed to fill with batteries

 

[WarDamnEagle]

Have they taught you how to do an NPV calculation yet? I think you will find it will be negative at almost any imaginable gas price. If you want to do it as a hobby/experiment, etc. then fine. If you're looking to save money then forget about it.

 

[Nikon Samurai]

Have they taught you how to do an NPV calculation yet? I think you will find it will be negative at almost any imaginable gas price. If you want to do it as a hobby/experiment, etc. then fine. If you're looking to save money then forget about it.

Naw, money's not the motivator :]

There are a lot of reasons I think it would be good to have

 

[WarDamnEagle]

There are a lot of reasons I think it would be good to have

Like?

 

[Bogo]

I guess the good news is then that I have a whole 6' bed to fill with batteries

A bed full of batteries weighs allot. Possibly even over your truck's rated carrying capacity. Anyways you won't need that many for an 80ish mile range. First off, check out this email list: [evtech] Electric vehicle technical subsystems page. You will find much better information there. Some of the guys on the list have been doing electric vehicles for over a decade. One, who I'm not sure if posts there anymore, is into electric vehicle drag racing.

 

[Red Pony]

I would love to know how your project turns out, I dream about
the possibility of having my BJ 60 electric, though not a major
motivation but saving some money was of interest...

 

[WarDamnEagle]

I would love to know how your project turns out, I dream about
the possibility of having my BJ 60 electric, though not a major
motivation but saving some money was of interest...

Apologies for any disillusionment this post might bring but please read post #4 again.

 

["N8"]

So if your retrofitting a rock crawler I think there might be something to the idea of 4 drive motors at the wheels run by some sort of generator. Maybe a super large baja racer style ifs running down to some hubs set up similar to portal axles where you can do your gear reduction directly past the motor and not have a large drive train in the way. You could also move the engine/generator behind the cab to give you a better center of gravity.

But in terms of outfitting an off road truck with one large motor (or any amount of motors) and a huge battery bank its a bad idea on all fronts. To get any sort of usable longevity out of one charge your going to have to add way too much weight in batteries. Which will in turn screw your power to weight ratio.

Electric stuff is cool, and has some incredible advantages to internal combustion, but it is very application specific.

 

[liljlandon]

So if your retrofitting a rock crawler I think there might be something to the idea of 4 drive motors at the wheels run by some sort of generator. Maybe a super large baja racer style ifs running down to some hubs set up similar to portal axles where you can do your gear reduction directly past the motor and not have a large drive train in the way. You could also move the engine/generator behind the cab to give you a better center of gravity.

Something similar has been done using hydraulics run by a lawnmower engine. It was bad ass. SLOW, but no matter what the tires moved, lots of spline mangling torque

 

[Hawk Thor]

You could put the E-motor on the gearbox so you can have gearing options and increased torque, then you can get away with a smaller motor.

I would put a 500-1000cc engine from a Kei car or a city car in the hood and put a big ass Chevy single wire alternator or two on it. That way you just need the engine to run at slow engine speeds, just enough to create the amps that the E-motor and lights will need. The engine will have enough torque for the alternators and it will be big enough to have a reasonably low sound volume, unlike a lawn mover motor that will drive you insane. You could put a hand throttle on it so you can set the RPM to a point and leave it there. Then if you notice increase amp draw on the amp meter and falling voltage on the Volt gauge, you can always just up the RPMs.

The small engine will use very little fuel, it will be light weight, it will give you the possibility to have AC to keep you cool, it will have a radiator so you can have a heater, an inverter for powertools, fever batteries to weigh you down, you can have one small, dedicated starting battery for the engine so you will not be stranded if the E-motors batteries go flat. Since the engine does´nt need to be throttle happy you can run an airintake and exhaust that limit noise and do their jobs filtering pollution and dust.

The engine will be sitting on enginemounts and the flywheel just covered with a plate that you can mount the starter to. The only connection to the drivetrain would be the wireing to the batteries that power the E-motor. The motor can be running in camp to produce power for lights, music and electrical devices. Think of it as a generator and a heater/cooler.

I would go this route if I were to build a trail vehicle that had an E-motor.

 

[WarDamnEagle]

You could put the E-motor on the gearbox so you can have gearing options and increased torque, then you can get away with a smaller motor.

I would put a 500-1000cc engine from a Kei car or a city car in the hood and put a big ass Chevy single wire alternator or two on it. That way you just need the engine to run at slow engine speeds, just enough to create the amps that the E-motor and lights will need. The engine will have enough torque for the alternators and it will be big enough to have a reasonably low sound volume, unlike a lawn mover motor that will drive you insane. You could put a hand throttle on it so you can set the RPM to a point and leave it there. Then if you notice increase amp draw on the amp meter and falling voltage on the Volt gauge, you can always just up the RPMs.

The small engine will use very little fuel, it will be light weight, it will give you the possibility to have AC to keep you cool, it will have a radiator so you can have a heater, an inverter for powertools, fever batteries to weigh you down, you can have one small, dedicated starting battery for the engine so you will not be stranded if the E-motors batteries go flat. Since the engine does´nt need to be throttle happy you can run an airintake and exhaust that limit noise and do their jobs filtering pollution and dust.

The engine will be sitting on enginemounts and the flywheel just covered with a plate that you can mount the starter to. The only connection to the drivetrain would be the wireing to the batteries that power the E-motor. The motor can be running in camp to produce power for lights, music and electrical devices. Think of it as a generator and a heater/cooler.

I would go this route if I were to build a trail vehicle that had an E-motor.

I don't think a small internal combustion engine will drive a large enough alternator to in turn drive a large enough motor (which will require a VSD drive or something similar) to make our trucks/4Runners move more than 15 mph up a 2% grade . You will have to rely on lots of juice from batteries in addition to the alternator.

In fact, if you apply a bit of physics to what you suggest, you would have to have an engine that produced more horsepower than the original engine if you want to add an electric motor to the equation and keep roughly the same performance. Why? Because in principle everything that you add to the equation introduces more losses due to ineffeciency. Yes, motors are efficient but they aren't 100% and alternators certainly aren't.

 

[2ndGenToyotaFan]

Are you saying perpetual motion is an impossibility? You're really close-minded Eagle.....

 

[WarDamnEagle]

Are you saying perpetual motion is an impossibility? You're really close-minded Eagle.....

That's Mr. War Damn Eagle to you....

I spent half my childhood sketching out perpetual motion machines. At least one of them, maybe more, were based on the use an electric motor to run a generator to run said electric motor....

 

[Bogo]

I don't think a small internal combustion engine will drive a large enough alternator to in turn drive a large enough motor (which will require a VSD drive or something similar) to make our trucks/4Runners move more than 15 mph up a 2% grade . You will have to rely on lots of juice from batteries in addition to the alternator.

In fact, if you apply a bit of physics to what you suggest, you would have to have an engine that produced more horsepower than the original engine if you want to add an electric motor to the equation and keep roughly the same performance. Why? Because in principle everything that you add to the equation introduces more losses due to ineffeciency. Yes, motors are efficient but they aren't 100% and alternators certainly aren't.

Actually an engine to generator to electric motor to differential to wheel is more efficient than engine to tranny to differential to wheel. The newest Cat D8 or D9 is a series diesel electric and is much more fuel efficient than it's predecessor. It's also simpler and less costly to make. Also going series gas electric or diesel electric allows you to add batteries and allow for battery only driving.

As for the drive lines, direct drive/no gears is best but impractical for a 4 motor system where the motors are mounted on the chassis. If you only want to rock crawl you can make a motor axle with the motors in the axle. It will have a high unsprung weight so it would be bad for road driving. Also it would be easy to make it a portal axle. Gearing the motors down will increase torque, but that likely isn't needed. Gear boxes rob efficiency. It would be better to get a motor with more sets of poles. They are usually electrically more efficient and have higher torque for the same amount of energy going in. The trade off is they turn slower and have a lower maximum usable RPM.

For a rock crawler I'd do one motor per wheel. The catch is you better be prepared to do some software work for the motor controller system.

 

[WarDamnEagle]

Actually an engine to generator to electric motor to differential to wheel is more efficient than engine to tranny to differential to wheel. The newest Cat D8 or D9 is a series diesel electric and is much more fuel efficient than it's predecessor. It's also simpler and less costly to make. Also going series gas electric or diesel electric allows you to add batteries and allow for battery only driving.

As for the drive lines, direct drive/no gears is best but impractical for a 4 motor system where the motors are mounted on the chassis. If you only want to rock crawl you can make a motor axle with the motors in the axle. It will have a high unsprung weight so it would be bad for road driving. Also it would be easy to make it a portal axle. Gearing the motors down will increase torque, but that likely isn't needed. Gear boxes rob efficiency. It would be better to get a motor with more sets of poles. They are usually electrically more efficient and have higher torque for the same amount of energy going in. The trade off is they turn slower and have a lower maximum usable RPM.

For a rock crawler I'd do one motor per wheel. The catch is you better be prepared to do some software work for the motor controller system.

I agree with everything that you just said but you're comparing apples to oranges. His suggestion was to put an electric motor on the original drive line.

I still I could walk faster uphill than you could make a toyota go with 4 electric motors driven by only a 1000 cc engine. How many horsepower is that Cat D9 generating?

 

[Bogo]

I agree with everything that you just said but you're comparing apples to oranges. His suggestion was to put an electric motor on the original drive line.

I still I could walk faster uphill than you could make a toyota go with 4 electric motors driven by only a 1000 cc engine. How many horsepower is that Cat D9 generating?

Putting an electric motor on the original toyota drive line is not issue except for the minor fact that it is able to deliver allot of torque at very slow speeds. Axel snapping torque...

Let's play with some data and numbers. A Kawasaki Z1 from 1973 has a 903cc engine and outputs 85HP. No fuel injection, no turbocharger. Some quick estimates tells me that I should easily be able to achieve 25MPH up the long grade on I-80 east of Salt Lake City. It's all very simple. My sister-in-law's 4runner has a 3.0slow engine doing 150HP. It is able to climb that grade at over 50MPH. So let's just use 50MPH. 85HP(from the Z1) is over half the HP of her 4runner's engine. That means it should be able to do 2/3rds of the 4runner's speed up that hill. Can you walk 33MPH? Can you even run that fast?

Anyways HP means ****. It is really ft lbs of torque delivered to the wheels that matters.

 

[WarDamnEagle]

Putting an electric motor on the original toyota drive line is not issue except for the minor fact that it is able to deliver allot of torque at very slow speeds. Axel snapping torque...

Let's play with some data and numbers. A Kawasaki Z1 from 1973 has a 903cc engine and outputs 85HP. No fuel injection, no turbocharger. Some quick estimates tells me that I should easily be able to achieve 25MPH up the long grade on I-80 east of Salt Lake City. It's all very simple. My sister-in-law's 4runner has a 3.0slow engine doing 150HP. It is able to climb that grade at over 50MPH. So let's just use 50MPH. 85HP(from the Z1) is over half the HP of her 4runner's engine. That means it should be able to do 2/3rds of the 4runner's speed up that hill. Can you walk 33MPH? Can you even run that fast?

Anyways HP means ****. It is really ft lbs of torque delivered to the wheels that matters.

I'll start working out and you start building.