Monday, December 21, 2009

December 2nd began the 4th year of driving the Corvair EV. Time does indeed fly when you are having fun. The T-145's are a huge improvement now that they are "awake". My Bro did an amazing job of aligning the front this fall. With those two items on the "done" list, I had really hoped for some pretty stupendous performance when the temps went down. Well, it wasn't as amazing as I had hoped so the R&D continues. (I still have a vast amount of things to learn about lead acid batteries.) I monitored the temperature of the interior of the battery boxes as well as the batteries themselves in various temps, inside the garage, outdoors, newly charged battery temps, etc. When the temp outside dropped to -14, the garage temp was at +22, the box temp was running about +25 and the battery temps were hovering around +37-40 degrees F. And, the rolling resistance, in cold temps, increased by about 15#. Needless to say, the newest project my Bro is working on is a heating system for the batteries. The tranny/running gears will be added to the list. The grease is heavy but the bank account is light, so that one has to wait. The best news is that the Corvair continues to be my daily driver. Merry Christmas!

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