Date: Sat, 3 Sep 2005 10:35:27 -0500
Reply-To: Stan Wilder <wilden1-1@SBCGLOBAL.NET>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Stan Wilder <wilden1-1@SBCGLOBAL.NET>
Subject: Re: Maybe now is the time to fill the tank of your extra car or
"parts vanagon"
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Years ago I had an opportunity to be at Dallas Machine Inc.
At that time they were rebuilding electric motors and gearboxes for Electric
Trolley cars.
You know the type, like you see in San Francisco but that run on tracks and
don't have the cog or cable drives.
Anyway they're the same general appearance.
The cars were being rebuilt for the McKinney Street Railway, a local
entrepreneur that takes tourist along a stretch of Dallas hot spot night
clubs and restaurants for about a 3 mile round trip run. It sure beats
walking since they restored the sidewalks and streets in that area to 1900s
brick and stone walks and streets that are hard to walk on.
To continue, the original Dallas cars were sold to Portugal in about 1950
and replaced with rubber tired electric busses then those were replaced with
rubber tired gas and diesel busses.
The McKinney Street railway bough about five of the cars back from Portugal
after they had run them another 50 years.
All total the cars had been run about 75 years. Now that's a good product.
http://www.streetcar.org/fline/streetcars/historic/189/
http://www.railwayage.com/may01/lowcost.html
Stan Wilder
Engine Ceramics
214-352-4931
www.engineceramics.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "jimt" <camper@TACTICAL-BUS.INFO>
To: <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
Sent: Saturday, September 03, 2005 10:09 AM
Subject: Re: Maybe now is the time to fill the tank of your extra car or
"parts vanagon"
> Last year I sent an email to a guy with an electric car association that
did
> a short thing on local tv. These are guys with their own little network
of
> supporters and companies that build their own electric cars and racers
even.
> After I got a reply I sent him the info on a vanagon. It could be done
but
> the range would be short. Under a 50 mile radius. The rear passenger
area
> would be totally covered in batteries. They said with new batteries that
> they are testing for a company that range would probably go to a 75 mile
> radius. Problem is that the better the battery the cost per watt goes
even
> higher until technology improves and/or production costs come down. The
> cost estimate was about 3500US without the batteries and me doing the
> majority of the work other than the mounting of two electric motors to the
> rear wheels.
> jimt
>
> On 9/2/05 9:29 PM, "turbodieseltrooper" <turbodieseltrooper@SBCGLOBAL.NET>
> wrote:
>
> > I would love to see a pratical electric powered vehicle - remember the
max
> > torque from an electric motor is available from 0 rpm. Additional power
can
> > be achieved by adding additional voltage at an increased amp draw. No
need
> > to tear into an engine to extract extra power.You could get all the tire
> > shreding power you want. You'll never see this though, because current
> > batteries are just too short lived
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