Home-made paint jobFull Undercarriage CoverEV Truck and Solar Panels that power my Battery BoxChristmas EVPizza pan hub capsVolt and Amp gaugesFront Grill BlockRe-arranged the engine compartment.
OwnerJohn Loveless
Owner's Other EVs2007 Black and Decker
1991 Geo Metro EV --RETIRED
LocationKaysville, Utah United States map
Web/EmailWebPage email image
Vehicle1992 Toyota Pickup
I have retired this vehicle. All parts have been
sold off to make room in the garage for my
wife's Leaf and to fund my other
experiments/projects.
MotorKostov ET20/9.0/40 Series Wound DC
27 horsepower
96 Volt 260Amp
4000 rpm
178 lb motor
I am running it at 120 volts but it
doesn't seem to care.
DrivetrainOriginal manual transmission and flywheel
(removed the starter ring gear).
I use all 5 gears and clutch still.
I use Royal Purple in transmission and
0W30 in differential.
ControllerCurtis 1221
Only 400Amp max. It's a little
sluggish starting my truck from a stand
still so I start in 1st gear on hills.
With a super massive 17 lb aluminum
heat-sink, it no longer has overheating
issues.
Batteries20 Costco/Kirkland Golf Cart, 6.00 Volt, Lead-Acid, Flooded
Costco sells these 225Ahr golf cart
batteries for $79 each. After core charge
and taxes that works out to $94 each.
System Voltage120 Volts
Charger Home made
Home made capacitive charger and bridge
rectifier. Charges battery in 5-7 hrs
at 240 volts or 12-14 hours at 120
volts.
I monitor energy consumption with a
kill-a-watt meter and TED5000.
Overcharging the batteries every couple
weeks equalized all the cells.
HeaterI bought a ceramic space heater element
but never installed it.
I insulated my garage and I survived
the
winter quite comfortably w/o a heater.
9/25/2012: Failed safety inspection
for no heater. Lame! Remedied by
installing space heater element into
the heater core. Works great but sucks
amps.
DC/DC Converter Modified ATX power supply
I opened up an ATX 400 watt computer
power supply. Connect the 120 volt
battery voltage to where the +&-
terminals of the bridge rectifier meet.
Works great to run all 12 volt systems.
Only cost me $39. Brilliant!
InstrumentationAnalog volt meter, amp meter (volt meter
reading shunt voltage drop). They are
installed in the cluster where the gas and
temperature gauges used to be.
All LED lights (less headlamps).
Top Speed87 MPH (139 KPH)
After getting low rolling resistance
tires, top speed went from 70 to 85.
Cool.
After aeromods, I got it up to 87mph
quite easily. The truck doesn't handle
well driving at these speeds.
I keep it at 55-60 mph just to maximize
range.
AccelerationSlow. 0-60mph in maybe 25 seconds. By
the time I leave the on-ramp and get on
the freeway I can get it up to 65mph so
I'm happy with it.
Passing someone on the freeway going
75mph is a sluggish affair.
Range67 Miles (107 Kilometers)
Thanks to aeromods max range is now
67miles (45 highway miles followed by
22 city miles as battery weakened)
Max range of continuous freeway 55mph
driving is 50+ miles.
Winter driving range is 40 miles.
5/2012: max freeway range is now only
35 miles as my batteries have degraded)
Driving faster (65mph) kills the range
and I can only go about 22 miles in the
winter time.
6/26/2012 I can drive about 22 miles
continuous and battery is getting low.
Max freeway range is approx 30 miles.
7/20/2012 Weird! Batteries are doing
much better now. All the extra charge
I have been giving them with my
capacitive charger must be doing some
good de-sulfating. Max freeway range
is probably 35 miles now.
8/22/2012: Found 4 bad batteries and a
heat-damaged wire. I resurrected 2 of
them by de-sulfating them separately
and range has improved significantly.
The other 2 batteries need more time
coming back to life on the de-sulfating
machine. Range on the now 108V pack is
about 30 miles freeway.
9/25/2012: Range is crappy especially
on
Tuesdays. I don't know why. Every
other
day it does just fine. Tuesdays 18-
freeway
miles. Every other day 25-freeway
miles. Luckily I can plug in at work so
I can make
it 20 miles back home.
Watt Hours/Mile295 Wh/Mile
Energy consumption is based off of a
kill-a-watt meter reading after a full
battery charge.
I get all my electricity from the grid-
tied solar panels on the house roof.
It was 325 Whr/Mile but after adding
the full undercarriage cover, it
dropped another 35 Whrs/mile. Wow!
5/12/2012: For some reason, it takes
more energy to charge my batteries all
the way now. I think they are over the
hill.
6/26/2012 In the past I only gave my
batteries a bulk charge on the
capacitive charger. Lead acid
batteries are nearly 100% efficient
during the bulk charge. Lately, I have
had to leave them longer in the top-off
charge stage (only 50% efficient) and
charge them more to get sufficient
range. Whr/mile is about 350. Yuck.
Peurkert effect has gotten worse too.
8/22/2012: After de-sulfating bad
batteries separately, the energy
consumption has gone back down. To my
surprise, my 20-mi commute on a 96V
pack (down 4 batteries) only took
250Wh/mi. I'm guessing that being
250lbs lighter at the time and driving
50-55mph the whole way helped.
9/25/2012: Battery pack takes lots more
energy to charge it. It used to only
take
5.8kWh to drive 20 miles. Now it takes
almost 8kWh.
EV Miles
Start:231,623 Miles (372,681 Kilometers)
Current:244,105 Miles (392,764 Kilometers)
Total:12,482 Miles (20,083 Kilometers)
 
    As of 3/13/2022
Seating Capacity3 adults uncomfortably
Curb Weight3,600 Pounds (1,636 Kilograms)
2700 lb truck less 500 ICE components.
Add 1240 lbs of lead, 180 lb motor, and
about 120 lbs of electronics and angle
iron. Removed tailgate, bumper and
spare tire (4/12/2012 removed flywheel
and clutch). I myself lost 15 lbs
converting this truck.
TiresP185/75R14 Hankook Optimo H724'a.
Had these installed and they made a huge
difference in range over the original ones
that came with the truck.
Conversion Time3 months
Conversion Cost$7944 including cost of donor vehicle.
Additional FeaturesLead foot breaks and arm-strong steering.
The nice new paint job is my handiwork.
I have never painted a car before.
It was really easy and turned out much
better than I would have imagined.

The Peurkert Effect is my enemy. For
extended range, I made aerodynamic
improvements. Smooth pizza pan hubcaps,
rear wheel skirts, front grill block
and added a full undercarriage cover.
The tail fins are for awesomeness only.
Update: 5/2012. I ripped out the
flywheel and clutch.
Now without 42 extra lbs of spinning
mass, it has better acceleration.
Shifting gears takes about 1 second
without a clutch.
6/26/2012 My motor is making a funny
squeaky sound at certain throttle levels
and another squeaky sound when coasting.
How annoying. I'm assuming my shaft
coupler has slipped and is rubbing
against the motor shaft. I may have
to tear into it to see what is going on.
Still drives great except for (in the
dead heat of summer) all my aero-mods
are causing slight overheating after
18 miles of strait freeway driving.
A small fan on the controller heat-sink
helps a lot.
8/22/2012: I accidentally tore up my
motor-transmission coupler. Luckily it
didn't damage the transmission shaft
spline. I put the flywheel and clutch
back in for the time being, until I can
build another coupler.
It's drivable but now I have a loud
vibration at certain RPM, caused by the
flywheel on an unbalanced shaft.
9/25/2012: Fixed driveshaft issues.
I also desulfated the bad batteries and
am back to running on 120V again. Range
is still only 30 miles and getting worse
as time goes on. I hope I can keep it
going until I finish my next EV (a Geo
Metro 60% complete). 20 freeway miles (each
way) is a long way to drive on an old pack.
12/15/2013: Vehicle has been retired.
I now exclusively drive the Geo Metro EV.
5/23/2013: My wife drives a Nissan Leaf.
we are a solar powered EV family.
I love driving fast and only hearing the sound of the wind.

Rule#1: Save energy and money without sacrificing
convenience and luxury.

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