Re: Electric Car Kit - How to Build Your Own Electric Powered Car at Home

If I did a conversion, I'd be stuck. If I did a scratch project I figured I would run a little blower over engine or batteries. While they are pretty efficient, I suspect there would be SOME heat.

BTW, the book uses an electric heater, but the range of those LA conversions is not that great anyway, so I'd planned on not using the heater. With a closed car, at least I'd avoid the windchill. Since I'd be using it principally in the daytime, I'd get some solar heating. In the coldest weather here, we are in arctic highs, so there is usually sunlight.

Not much. Back in the 1920s when electric cars were very popular, it wa not unusual to see electric cars with gasoline heaters in them.

Yes, the electric heater pulls a hell of a lot of current, and it doesn't really heat up all that much either. It makes you really appreciate just how much wasted energy the gasoline engine is producing... a whole lot of heat comes off of that block. Even on an air-cooled VW the cabin heat mostly works.

--scott

I think they were called South Wind or South Breeze (sp?) heaters. My mom talks about them every now and then. I believe the military still uses a version of them.

However, once you know how they work, I'm not sure I would ride in a car with one of those things.

Early Corvairs had a seperate gasoline fueled heater.

Ed

My dad put a Southwind heater in his VW beetle, which had a heater but not a very good one (took a fraction of the cooling air over the engine). The Southwind worked very well.