Bricklin EV-1 Owner's Manual
Introduction
How the Bricklin Was hosen
I have been the owner of a 1975 Bricklin since 1976. When I initially purchased the vehicle it had
approxi ately 5,000 iles on the odo eter. The Bricklin was y daily driver for a couple of years,
and then it began to sit for longer and longer periods of ti e. For any years it resided in y garage
doing nothing ore than taking up uch needed space.
At one point I decided to take the Bricklin to Michigan to have air-doors and a console installed. Upon
returning, it sat in the garage again. When I finally began to drive it, I found that it was not running
very well. I decided to have it brought back to life, in a ore invigorated for . I had the engine
rebuilt, added a 4BBL Holley carburetor, alu inu high-rise anifold, headers, alu inu radiator,
and other iscellaneous ite s (i.e. new brakes, fluids, etc.). I also decided to change the original
color fro “suntan” to another original color, “white”. I prepaid for all the work. After five years the
vehicle was returned by the shop that perfor ed the above entioned work. I learned a valuable
lesson about paying for the work perfor ed in advance of the work actually being perfor ed.
Though I had hoped the perfor ance would be greatly i proved, it turned out the work was very sub-
standard. After >$15,000 the vehicle barely ran without dying, and the paint job was seriously flawed.
I was quite disenchanted, and the vehicle went back to the garage space it had beco e accusto ed
to. After 37 years the 1975 Bricklin still had less than 34,000 original iles.
Unlike the Bricklin, I continued to work, and to build a new co pany renown for powerful electric
otors co only used in converting vehicles fro gasoline burning internal co bustion engines, to
pure electric otor power. Series wound, brushed DC Motors are capable of producing enor ous
a ounts of torque at stall speed. A single WarP 11 otor has a peak stall torque of 1,959 ft-lbs. - if
you could provide it with enough a perage (~3,951 A ps). The a ount of torque developed is
based upon the A perage squared (I²). Si ply put, if you double the a perage you quadruple the
torque – at least until saturation occurs at which ti e the torque increase beco es linear. The
voltage supplied to the otors deter ines the RPMs the otor will spin at. This is a nearly linear
relationship. If you double the otors voltage, you will double the RPMs, and thus the HP (Horse
Power). Actually, it is slightly ore than double since ost losses are fixed. There are li its as to
how uch voltage and a perage these otors can sustain, but they are quite robust.
Using early versions of these powerful electric otors a battery powered dragster was developed that
was capable of 60' ti es under one second (.986). Unfortunately, the lead-acid or PbA batteries of
the late 1990's were not capable of sustaining the power level needed to aintain that rate of
acceleration for ore than a few seconds. Even so, the vehicle was capable of 10 second ¼ iles
nearing 130 MPH.
Batteries
Super-capacitor testing was perfor ed in the dragster in conjunction with NASA Illinois and the NASA
Glenn Research Center. When the super capacitors were connected in parallel to the battery pack,
they beca e slaves of the batteries. This eant that they could not output any power exceeding
what the PbA batteries were capable of. But, the testing of the super capacitors did lead us to
another new battery technology generally referred to as Lithiu che istry based batteries.
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