Incessant Chatterings of Yours Truly

Ok, you'll have to bear with me since I'm not quite the linguistic expert as my other half. If you haven't figured it out... I'm Diem. I'm the one with the whole automotive, hands on, getting dirty, lets build stuff kinda mentality.

I first started out looking for things to save gas in my car. I found out what some people are doing to try to save gas. But ripping out my seats, bashing off my side mirrors and putting cardboard in the grill to lighten the weight of the car and increase the aerodynamics were things I wasn't really willing to do, especially since I like having a place for people to sit in my car, as well as seeing behind me and not blowing up my engine by cutting off it's air supply. I wanted something different.

I actually stumbled across my next project. (pause for dramatic effect) Flux capacitor!!! Well, not really. It's a hydrogen cell made from a mason jar. Suprisingly, not incredibly difficult to make and install. Some of the parts, i.e. the wire, can be hard to find, but not impossible. With a little help from my dad and his tools that I didn't have. I successfully built and installed my first hydrogen cell. It does work, it still does. At first, I boosted my gas mileage quite a bit, but then the stupid computer decided to adjust for it. There are ways to compensate and actually manually adjust the amount of gas that goes into the engine, but that seemed a bit too complicated for me. But I'm not going to complain about my extra 6-8 mpg.

Lately, I've been all interested in the concept of electric cars and I REALLY want to find some shell of a car and build an electric car. Not just for the reason of it being cheaper and easier to maintain (less moving parts and grease), not just for the reason that it's more eco-friendly (zero emissions), but because I think it would be awesome to have a car that I've basically built and something different from everything else on the road.

I've been doing research on it, how to do it, what it would cost, what's involved, the batteries, recharging, all that fun stuff. I've also found, that people are doing it. There's places all over that will help you do it. And, what the price is, to go from gas to electric. I'm still doing my research and for now, there's nothing I can do but keeping my eyes on my goal.

I came across this listing of websites that actually shows other websites that do electric conversions. There's a few of them that offer classes on how to convert and some that just convert it for you. Average cost is about $5,000. Now if you can find a cheapo car from a junkyard, drop the five grand into the shell, you wouldn't have to worry about oil changes or transmission fluid. $40 oil changes every 3 months and a radiator flush every year or two, $30 in gas every couple of weeks vs. the $5000 one time purchase converstion, the low cost electricity from charging at night, and the replacement batteries every couple years (still looking for cost on that).

I know that not every vehicle out there can become and electric, but we can start on a few, spread the word, that sorta thing. We're still gonna need the big rigs (which /can/ use the hyrdogen cells) using the diesel and I'm sure a lot of people are going to want to keep they're fossil fuel cars, it's human nature to avoid change.

But yes, I've chattered for long enough. I want an electric car because I think it would be neat. I already have a hydrogen cell to help with my gas mileage. I currently just have maintenence projects on our car and our friends' cars. Joy of joys :)

-Diem