Starion

Farewell to a Legend

August 12, 2010

It is a sad day when one has to let go of a beloved Starion. Regrettably, due to financial commitments and just ‘getting on with life,’ I have sold my ICE Starion GSRIII. This was a beautiful car to drive that I had once considered converting to electric. Being an automatic, I was advised against [...]

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Decals on your Electric Car?

April 1, 2010

A good friend, Ash Brown from Ash Stripes detailing, popped over to see the car. He made some suggestions and as I had used his services in the past for my other Starion GSR, I thought it’d be good to add some kind of signage. I initially ordered the plastic chrome-look lettering for the rear, [...]

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Ya Gotta Love Panel Beaters

June 18, 2009

The guard on my car needs a fix after a bump – oops – a simple job one would expect, but shopping around for a good panel beater is difficult as most don’t want to guarantee their workmanship on anything that could bring on the slightest hint of rust. I have a spare guard but [...]

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My Breaker Broke :-(

April 11, 2009

My Airpax breaker, the main breaker switch, now has a busted switch-arm (I’ll save you the painful images). Just a few test throws under tension, the supposedly strong Bakelite switch arm shattered. The Airpax breaker is expensive, and we’ll have to see if it’s still under warranty as I paid for this some time ago. [...]

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Echo and the Funny Men

February 5, 2009

While my car waits for some final parts, the Echo conversion is progressing well and we hope to have it drivable very soon. There’s an EV show coming up and the Echo will be perfect for it, taking pride of place amongst the smaller vehicles and some funny guys riding funny go-carts etc – yet [...]

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More talk? More action please!

January 14, 2009

While Ford are thinking of releasing a fully-electric work van in 2010, Mercedes has got in on the EV action with a proposal for a new EV in a B-class range, namely the BlueZERO. Blue is not so Green? While the BlueZero has a concept proposal for a 100% electric ‘E-cell’ vehicle, we wonder if [...]

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Time to Look at Curtis Cooling

December 9, 2008

Although mentioned previously, we’ve had to put it aside while working out where everything else is going to fit. As you know, the Curtis has a bunch of MOSFETS inside, ‘sinked’ to the base of the housing. Although efficiency can be improved in a controller design, simple immediate solutions can involve better cooling. Some folks [...]

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[Video] Electric Starion Part 6

November 14, 2008

After successfully testing the drivability, it’s back to the workshop to get stuff removed to paint the battery racks and sort the best place for the charger. I did a mock-up Zivan so I could squeeze it into a place in the pillar where Nathan cut a piece out for access. The test proved that [...]

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Brakes: Positioning the Vacuum Pump

November 11, 2008

This has been sitting around in the garage for some time now begging to be installed. When we rushed to prepare for the EV demo, the brakes weren’t finished – they were hard-pressed to slow down one could say. As most cars have vacuum pumps for power-assisted breaking, it’s a must-have for my car too, [...]

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[Video] Electric Starion at the AEVA Electric Car Show

October 23, 2008

Now Drivable – but early days yet… The Electric Starion is now at a drivable state and we take her for a spin at the annual electric car show in Sydney.

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Power Steering & Air Conditioning Mounts

October 13, 2008

Naturally I’m not going to have just a basic EV, the complete picture just like any other car is required and this includes air conditioning and power steering. From Video#3 you will have seen the AC driver motor for the power steer and air-con. The following images show the metal-cutouts and fit tests where it [...]

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Battery Balancing Time – and ‘Why Thundersky?’ Someone Asks…

October 10, 2008

A few people are asking me why I have chosen Thundersky Lithiums over conventional lead-acid deep cycle batteries. Firstly, lithium phosphates are lighter than deep-cycles, and Lithium polymers are even lighter again, approximately half the weight of the phosphates, making them useful for a variety of applications other than just electric vehicles, such as electric [...]

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