Taking a walk/old car...

[Gavin]

Was walking the dogs a couple of weeks ago and a neighbor had a beautiful old car outside his garage...since I was walking my three dogs and I had never talked to this neighbor before, well I asked a couple of questions, but never got to take the photos I would have liked to...

He told me it was a 1912 Ford that he bought 5 years ago and wanted to fix up, but never got around to it. He was going to put it up for sale.

Anyways, didn't think about it again til I'm walking the dogs again and it looks like he may have sold it...



So, three dogs pulling on leashes or not, whip out iPhone a take a photo...

And then I started thinking...dang that car would be perfect for an electric conversion.

1. Parts would be hard to impossible to find...so no way are you keeping it "pure"...so why not update the non visible parts?
2. Never taking that on the highway, so having a top speed of 35 mph should be fine.
3. Never taking it on long rides ( rides in a fair, rides around town...nothing more than that)... so a top range of 40 miles would be plenty...heck overkill even.

You done need an expensive electric motor like the LEAF of Ford Focus electric. Low top speed and low weight. And you could probably get away with 6-8 kwh of batteries...heck the batteries in the Empulse would likely be enough.

So for under 10 k, maybe 8k, you can put batteries and motor and BMU and such in that...pretty up the outside and BOOM, beautiful, useable classic...

Heck Brammo could have grabbed that and made a simple little side project of it and had it in their showroom...a "look at what was made 100 years ago...Now look at what we make today."

Gavin

[Richard230]

I'll bet that car is worth several hundred thousand dollars, if it is original.

I would like to see someone convert an old 1900's electric car to use modern batteries. That would illustrate how those old cars, which got hammered when the electric starter IC motor came on the market, would have performed with a different battery technology.

I used to have a high school friend who's dad repaired and restored old Stanley Steamers. I had no idea how huge those cars were. They were the size of a F450 truck chassis. But they sure were quiet and would pull up any hill, leaving a trail of steam behind. Of course, they did take a while to get steam up in the boiler.