favguy

Man, there are some properly mad people on here I love it!!

I've not used them, so can't comment on postage or service, just nice to find a comprehensive source of Favorit parts.

If you need just the door skins, you can buy them here: http://www.obautodily.cz/eshop/skoda-favorit-forman/karoserie/3.stranka In fact they have a very good range of most Favorit repair panels, along with other rare (in the UK!) goodies. Google translate is needed, or the need to bone up on your Czech!

That is just terrible :( Please confirm the details of the bodyshop to ensure no one else here has the misfortune to use them!

Hi, The effect on range won't be measurable, they draw about 3.5A from the 12V system when running, this means a current pull from the traction pack to supply the 12V system of an additional 0.35A, I suppose it may reduce the range by a few metres

Cooling matters... Due to the car having the ability to run continuously for 80 miles or more now, I decided to upgrade the cooling a little. Starting with the controller. On a warm day here a few weeks ago, about 26C, (About as hot as it ever gets!) I noted a maximum temperature whilst range testing uphill on the motorway of 70C from the controller, due to the large heatsink, this quickly dropped back into the 60's under less load, but I'd still like to run the controller cooler for long life, so I've installed this directly under the heatsink: It's a 140mm Noctua NF-A14 Industrial fan. Runs at 3K RPM and pushes out 158CFM. It's so powerful for its size, when testing it on the bench, It actually lifts off and hovers above the bench when blowing down! I'm looking forward to seeing what difference it makes... Onto the motor, I've not noticed any particularly hot running here, maximum I measure is about 30C above ambient, but I'm not measuring the Comm. & brush gear, which no doubt is much hotter. Anyway, it can't do any harm to add some more cooling. I also wanted to close in the Comm. & brush gear to keep out dirt and any splashing water. Although not shown here, I made up a 2 part cowl from galvanised sheet steel that clamps around the motor, with a rubber gasket to make it water tight. It's got a 60mm inlet built in for the ducting from the blower. Heres the set up: It's made from a Rule, 4" bilge blower, that blows 240CFM of air with a Ramair high flow filter to keep everything nice and clean. In both cases, the fans start and run continuously whenever the drive system is activated. I'll report back with the difference in running temperatures in due course

A good couple of suppliers there, can't believe the good prices from the Yeovil company especially. Man, It's so depressing how few Favs. are left though, especially considering what a great car it actually is and what a pivotal model it was for Skoda.... :no:

Hi, Good job, but keep your eye on the rusted areas closely, cleaning, treating & keeping out the damp as you have will slow down the rusting, but the rustcure stuff doesn't work and is temporary, it will come back. The only way to effectively stop rust for good is to remove all of it, including pitting to clean steel. Start by removing as much as humanly possible with abrasives and finish what's left off with local sandblasting (although difficult on a finished car!) or phosphoric acid based removal (takes ages and several applications, but will remove all rust eventually!)

Better just finish off the battery update... The front battery pack took a little more work than expected. Despite my cunning planning and measuring everything at least twice, it turned out reality had other ideas and the modules simply wouldn't fit without interference with the cars body and other components. The answer was to dis-assemble the three units, trim 18mm from the top of the side walls and re-assemble "Pisa" style with a rearward facing angle from the vertical of about 5 degrees to each unit! Reversing the connecting cables to sit below the crimped lugs meant I could keep the cabling height below that of the modules terminal busbars, allowing me to just save the 18mm in height. In the end the small front battery install took more work than all the rest of the battery install!, but the end result is nice End result is also very splash proof and should keep our damp climate away from the module cans.

RapidRapid, I've sent you a PM regarding the wheels

Hi johndoe, In answer to your points, they're not really problems: Even if the electricity to run the car is made entirely using coal, emissions are still 30% lower than an equivalent petrol or diesel car simply because electric motors are so much more efficient than internal combustion engines producing pollution locally. In any case here in the UK, electricity is produced from a mix including much cleaner gas, renewables and nuclear, so emissions are in reality much lower. Also, I can use a solar array to run the car with no emissions at all, ever, if I so choose Also, consider this... to drill for, refine & ship 1 gallon of petrol or diesel from well to pump uses almost as much energy as I use to drive electrically the same distance that gallon would take you in a petrol car!!! So you have to include this when considering emissions and oil based fuels, it's not just about the tailpipe emissions! Fuel cost per mile works out at around 10% of the cost of running a small diesel car. My conversion cost in total has been around £10,000 to £11,000 at this point. (I think, I stopped counting!). When I started no manufacturer (viable) electric cars existed to buy, if I were starting again today, instead I could consider buying a used Nissan Leaf for what the project has cost me and save myself the work of converting. I wouldn't do this as money or savings was never the point of this project. (It's never part of any project done for the love of it) I did it just because I could and for the pure pleasure of engineering, problem solving & owning something unique. The UK Government doesn't help financially in any way with conversions, or when buying a used EV, they do give £5000 off new ones. (at the moment!) Where are you based in Russia, I spent some time in Novokuznetsk, Siberia a few years ago.. Regards, Paul

Nice to meet you all yesterday and thanks for all the kind comments on the car

Thanks for the kind words, it was nice to meet so many of you all yesterday at the meet

Hi, Nice to meet you at the meet yesterday and I'm looking forward to following your project. It just occurred to me I have a very nice set of original Favorit alloys from my electric project sitting around, all with excellent tyres, would look good on your truck, let me know if they are of interest. Best regards, Paul

Second thoughts.... not touching this one with a barge pole! .

A little more progress on the battery upgrade. The front three batteries have been taking a while... unlike the other batteries that aren't subject to atmospheric considerations, these three sit under the bonnet and our damp climate means I want them pretty much watertight and certainly splash proof, so an enclosure is necessary. I'd initially planned to make this entirely from polycarbonate, but it's just not rigid enough without using a really thick wall, so after playing around I've settled on a combination of 4mm aluminium plate for the module end plates/box walls, with polycarbonate for the box base, ends and lid. There is no way to install all the batteries at once in one enclosure due to available space so I've devised a modular "Meccano" style system whereby I can install one box at a time, interlocking them with appropriate closed cell foam seals. Once in , the Polycarb. end sections can be fitted with appropriate glands for the cabling. The joining angle and "T" sections you see in the pics are anodised to protect against corrosion, and fitted using high strength 3M double sided adhesive tape, the end plates are etch primed and finished with matt black paint. Once they're in with the clear sides and lid on, the end result should be quite presentable.

Time for a little update on my slow progress of the battery upgrade. I've been waiting patiently for some parts to arrive from the US and from a useless sheet plastics company here in the UK that I won't be using anymore!. Anyway, I've now finished the rear and mid installs, except the monitoring cables, (which I'll do later once it's all finished). I've had yet another change of mind on how I'm doing the front battery install, so have ordered a batch of aluminium cut to size. I was going to use polycarbonate, but it's just too flexible to clamp the modules in place without going to a very thick wall size. I think the end result will be nice now though, it's a combination of Aluminium for the sides of the batteries and Polycarb. for the end and top covers. I've had a bit of dumb luck with the battery box sizing really. The boxes were initially made to accommodate 160Ah Thunderskys, (The Japanese Leaf/Renault cells didn't exist back in the day when I made up the boxes back in 2008!) but the boxes have worked out perfectly to accommodate a total of 54 of the new modules. I also got a chance to make up the box cover for the rear set, (carpeted 9mm ply) In the end I've actually only sacrificed a total of 150mm (6 Inches) from the luggage compartment depth. A few pictures... Back soon... PS... I need to change the silver battery box lid fixings to black, or paint them!

@ Yossarian G, Not at the minute I do quite like the thought of doing a long range high powered AC EV version of the Rover 75, but funds and time won't permit it at present... When funds do permit, I'll probably be tempted to buy a used Model S Tesla instead though!, we'll just have to wait and see... As for updates on the battery upgrade, I've been waiting on parts delivery in order to finish the mid and front battery installs, most bits are in now, just waiting for something from US, expected early to mid next week, then should have it finished by the weekend coming

I stand corrected on the galvanising It's a shame they didn't bother with the areas that actually rust badly though! The front and rear arches...

If you go to your nearest trade auto paint supplier (not retail such as Halfords!) and tell them your looking for a 1994 Skoda silver, they should find it quickly as there was only one silver available at the time.

I thought it might be time for an update on the Fav-e The new batteries are here! I finally decided overkill is always appropriate and went with a total of 54 of the AESC lithium modules ( http://www.eco-aesc-lb.com/en/product/liion_ev/ ) as used in the Nissan Leaf and Renault Fluence. You can't actually buy these for love nor money from either AESC, Nissan, or Renault, but I was lucky enough to get my hands on a new Renault Fluence battery from a liquidation sale of a failed battery swapping service in Israel called Better Place. Made in Japan, sent to Israel, shipped to the US following bankruptcy, from there over to Rotterdam and finally to my workshop, so it's pretty well travelled already! This is supplying 48 of the modules, the remaining 6 were sourced from a company in Las Vegas that specialise in Hybrid and electric car battery upgrades and quite literally fell off the back of a lorry, (complete with the new Leafs being delivered to the Nissan dealer!) . So I've somehow got to shoehorn these into the Fav-e. The effects of this should however be quite astounding. The nominal running voltage will increase from 120v to 137v, but due to the much larger Ah capacity and chemistry of the new cells, there will now be negligible voltage sag under heavy load. This coupled with a weight saving of about 80Kg's over the old batteries should give a very significant performance gain. The original engine produced a weedy 50Kw at peak RPM, the new set up will give me 68.5Kw. Now a 37% power increase may not sound that outstanding... but, bear in mind we are talking about an electric motor here, so that 68.5Kw is available all the time! from zero RPM...so I'll probably not have to bother setting off in second any more unless it's up hill and skip straight to third... The biggest improvement I'm hoping to see is range, the 1 hour rate on my old batteries was 65Ah, and I'd only been using 45Ah max of this to keep the batteries happy and maximise their life, so about 5.4Kwh useable. This gave me a range of about 22 miles. The new pack will be 27Kwh, of which I will probably use 25Kwh. This, in conjunction with the higher voltage and lower weight should give me a solid 120 mile range. As a comparison, the Leaf, using 48 of these modules and weighing in at 1500Kg will do about 80 miles in real world driving, Fav-e will come in at around 1050Kg and have a 12.5% larger pack A pic of the pack being broken down for re-configuration: The modules are being grouped into threes, giving a total of 18 x 180Ah sets @ 7.6V nominal. Due to the ability of the car to now run for much longer at sustained higher speeds, I'm also upgrading to a forced air cooling system for the motor along with custom made high performance brushes, I'll report more on this shortly. Here we see the new rear banks installed: On a totally different topic, I've also upgraded the wheels and tyres to 15" rims with low profile, low rolling resistance tyres, again I'll report on this shortly. Back soon...

I mean no disrespect to any Felicia owners here, but I'd not bother with a Felicia if I were you, if you are worried about parts availability for the Favorit, the Felicia is only just behind it, (they share most running gear) although I don't see the problem myself, with the exception of body panels, but they can be sourced from Czech Republic if needed. The Fabia is an infinitely better car than the Felicia, only marginally more to buy now for an older one, and due to being built from 100% double sided, galvanised steel, doesn't rust at all if looked after. The Felicia is old school, non galvanised steel and suffers rust worse than the last Favorits did and most are all getting pretty beat up and rusty now (locally anyway, I only see dog rough ones around :( ). You can also stick with the trusty old chain driven Skoda engine in the Fabia, (bored out to 1.4), if you like it

Hi, Love the colour of your Fav. Felicia 1.9D estate springs are a direct fit to the Favorit and as much stiffer as you can go without getting custom springs

Yes, I thought that too, It's probably been repainted and the doors were done whilst off the car, maybe on a different day and the match was slightly off. I suspect a repaint actually, as Lada factory paintjobs were never that perfect...

My collection of cars is already too big and I'm currently skint due to having just paid almost the asking price of that car for a new battery for my electric Favorit :think: