DIY electric Datsun does quarter mile in 10 seconds

Has this been shared yet? (Sound volume warning: annoying kids...)

[youtube]7rVTIpS5zb4[/youtube]

Any particular reason they chose that car/age, or was it just handy?

White Zombie is a legend as far as i know !!.. ( I think he's registered here )

Ah okay I searched some more and there's an old post where it was doing 12 seconds.

I'm not even into racing but I just find this very impressive overall for the DIY factor.

ah okay, here's a mini-documentary on the car (and the maker) from 2008

[youtube]UAYrsEOxqYc[/youtube]

Annoying kid sounds yes but i think i heard go white zombie in the heckles and did it GO!!

I can guess why thay made that selection, as that is my favorite era of cars.

Rear-wheel-drive from the factory.

Light-weight body from the time before crumple-zones and 35-mph crash bumpers were mandated by DOT.

2-door is lighter and more rigid than the 4-door.

Probably recued from the scrap-yard, so purchased dirt cheap.

When you get a car fast enough that its below 13-seconds in the quater-mile, throwing more horse-power at it might just end up spinning your wheels. Traction and light weight are very important at that milestone if you want to improve acceleration any further...

It really is very impressive, I like his style too in the documentary.

Not putting down the kids, it's good they are excited about it, just warning people they are right on the mic.

It must be a bit scary going that fast, that quickly, in a car that you know doesn't have airbags, or any real crumple zones!

Can he drive that around day to day? Or is it just for racing?

Nice, nice, nice...Very very nice

There was a time he was able to drive it to the track because of the size of the pack but I haven't been online on the evlist in years.
I think this was/is his driving around car. Same car not super high performance but still really nice and it is super clean. He used to enter and win radio soundoff competitions with it.
http://www.evalbum.com/36

It has some really neat stuff like the rear motorzed battery tray


Wow I am soooooooooo old.

I do believe he drives it to the track.. races.. and drives home.. ( could be wrong.. but i'm fairly certain i've read that at one point )

Here's a solo drag without the kids in the foreground.

[youtube]yCx-LYV6KkM[/youtube]

The White Zombie is street legal.

http://www.plasmaboyracing.com/whitezombie.php

Favorite quotes from the above link:

192 Dow/Kokam lithium polymer cells contained in 12, 29.6V clear Lexan modules. Battery pack at 355V, capable of 2,400 amps discharges, and stores 22.7 kWh of energy. Thanks to Dow/Kokam, ChemWest, and Manazanita Micro for their support.

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capable of 2,400 amps discharges

Best lead acid powered ET 11.882 @ 109.58 mph!
World's Quickest
'Street Legal Electric Car'
(in the standing start NHRA timed 1/4 mile, per NEDRA)
0-60 in ~ 3.5 seconds!

Best lithium ion powered ET 10.400 @ 117.71 mph!
World's Quickest
'Street Legal Electric Car'
(in the standing start NHRA timed 1/4 mile, per NEDRA)
1.58 sec. 60 ft. time, 0-60 in ~ 1.8 seconds, 1/8 mile ET 6.487 @ 107.44 mph!

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They chose the Datsun 510 for the same reason I chose my 1969 Datsun 510 to swap a Honda S2000 drivetrain into.

It's extremely light.

It's RWD with the ability to run all the R160-R180 Nissan and/or Subaru rear-ends. This means it's economical to put a very strong (350-500hp capable) rear end in it, and when they break, it's ~$200 for a new one.

It has a massive engine bay that can hold anything from a big block chevy to a super inline 6.

It's rigid. Not as rigid as modern sports cars, but WAY more rigid than all the American cars from the same era.

I'm actually at a loss right now to think of a better production car chassis you could use for a drag racing EV. lol The only things that suck about them are the huge PITA it was to convert the steering setup from recirculating ball to rack and pinion, and then get the bump-steer geometry to perform correctly again, but for drag racing none of that matters, I just did it to mine because I like to road race and drift the piss out of it, and recirculating ball is awful for either of those activities.

Anyone see the car in the other lane in the first video. VERY HOT CAR!!!

That's 1142hp (825,000watts) coming from the batteries. What sort of motor(s) was he using?

veloman said:

That's 1142hp (825,000watts) coming from the batteries. What sort of motor(s) was he using?

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Well, batteries capable of delivering 825kw, means the batteries are capable of that, not what they are being discharged at in this application. For example, the pack on my Ebike is capable of 70,000watts of discharge, but since I'm limited by the controllers to 10kw each, I only get to use a quarter of the capability of the battery pack.

You can pretty clearly see from the difference in ET and trap speed that he runs out of gearing. Working the numbers on it, if he is 2400lbs with driver, the car would need to have ~305whp (horse power at the rear wheels) to accelerate to 117mph in the quarter mile. Yet, from the 10.4second quarter mile in a 2400lbs vehicle, he is looking at needing ~421whp. This means we can conclude he is applying well over 421hp (likely ~500whp) for the first half of the track or so, then runs out of gearing (and/or BEMF grows too close to pack voltage etc), and applies a substantially lower amount of power for the back half of the track.

This one one possibility, and this possibility makes the assumption that he is NOT sandbagging to avoid needing the safety requirements of a <10second car, which include a ton of expensive BS, and getting the chassis NHRA certified, and getting driver certifications etc etc. I'm in this boat with my Civic... I can run as fast as I want on the street, but at the track I gotta shut down a little after the 1/8th mile or I get booted for not meeting the safety requirements of a faster classed car (which I will never try to meet, because it's still a street car 95% of the time, and meeting those rules would ruin it's streetcar functions.)

LFP, have you explained anywhere on this site what exactly you have going on in your car? Clearly its more than just driving skill... From your other thread about racing those two monkeys, you made it seem like your car was basically stock.


I drive a COMPLETELY stock 2dr 97 civic btw.... lol I leave the performance riding for when I'm pushing the bike pedals.

Seems to me from looking at a ton of this guys videos that his controller system uses a parallel/series electric transmission to avoid gearing issues. I'm pretty sure he doesn't shift. He runs two motors connected head to head, and a Zilla controller and has a programmed controller "controller" which switches the series connections to //. Reference here: [youtube]1zhKMzMZ_eM[/youtube]

veloman said:

LFP, have you explained anywhere on this site what exactly you have going on in your car? Clearly its more than just driving skill... From your other thread about racing those two monkeys, you made it seem like your car was basically stock.


I drive a COMPLETELY stock 2dr 97 civic btw.... lol I leave the performance riding for when I'm pushing the bike pedals.

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I've got a disgusting amount of money into the civic... lol It's a sleeper, meaning it's built to appear as stock as possible, yet actually be able to crush about ~99.99999% of street driven vehicles. You would be lucky to trade 10x 1997 civics for just the parts cost alone to build the car. Then you're looking at a few grand in up-keep costs to replace the broken/exploded parts a few times every season. Sometimes the best parts money can buy don't last a single event, sometimes they don't last a single pass. You have to constantly be innovating and creating new and stronger designs. You have to perpetually be upping your game, not just every season, but often every event if you want to stay in the game. A perpetual merciless uphill battle that will drain all your resources and time, ruin your relationships, and often takes your drivers licence and sometimes freedom with it.

From what I've seen, this is pretty much true across all forms of unsponsored auto racing if you want to be competitive.

Here is my playlist on some more footage of mister Wayland's adventures:
http://www.youtube.com/user/Bogt#grid/user/22209C97C746101D

I am really impressed by the new improvements on the Zombie. Siamese 9" motors with series/parallel shifting and field weakening, aluminum Ford 9 inch diff, Kokam battery pack for 120 miles range, structural strength improvements to the chassis and new rims and brake setup. They are even talking about adding a 2nd Zilla Z2K 400V 2000A controller. We are going to see some good runs from this EV!

His blog is always a nice read: http://www.plasmaboyracing.com/blog/

You think shows like Top Gear would be into things like this instead of making fun of electric cars.

Maybe the american version will have a different attitude towards electric but from the trailer I've seen it will probably be canceled after the first season.

I like the sound of these high powered EVs more than the ICEs. Cool sound, yet you don't go deaf. And you can drive the EV slow without waking up neighbors. I have a neighbor with a Harley and the thing sounds like it's taking off from a runway while he's navigating our parking lot. What a joke. Well at least he's safer with the noise while on multi-lane roads...

Someone should start a E-bike drag racing series. I bet you could get some pretty wild builds. Now of course you would want to limit it, or else people would just end up building drag racing motor cycles eventually.

You could just have classes, 35# for the kids, 50# for the amateur class and 75# for the unlimited. Then of course you could have the cheap class, lead acid only with weight limits too.

Deron.

Sounds like a hell lot more fun than the Nissan Leaf..

veloman said:

I like the sound of these high powered EVs more than the ICEs. Cool sound, yet you don't go deaf. And you can drive the EV slow without waking up neighbors. I have a neighbor with a Harley and the thing sounds like it's taking off from a runway while he's navigating our parking lot. What a joke. Well at least he's safer with the noise while on multi-lane roads...

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I agree, what is it with people that have a vehicle with an exhaust note that's so loud that nothing else is heard, at least the loud Harleys go past quicker than a loud screaming two stroke moped banger

deronmoped said:

Someone should start a E-bike drag racing series. I bet you could get some pretty wild builds. Now of course you would want to limit it, or else people would just end up building drag racing motor cycles eventually.

You could just have classes, 35# for the kids, 50# for the amateur class and 75# for the unlimited. Then of course you could have the cheap class, lead acid only with weight limits too.

Deron.

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Am i the only Electric bicycle drag racing Pioneer

http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=20592

I did on the high 19 sec last night at 61mph.


Doc