55 Ford F-100 Electric Car Conversion

by Mark
(Warrensburg, MO)

1955 Ford F-100 for Electric Conversion?

1955 Ford F-100 for Electric Conversion?



I have an old 1955 Ford F-100 pick-up that I want to convert to electric. What would be a good AC motor selection for this conversion if I wanted speed?

Hi, Mark!

What a lovely old truck!

(What a HEAVY old brick. Well, I don't blame you, because I couldn't resist it, either; )

Um, you're gonna want a big old AC motor, and line that bed with light lithium batteries. You already know you need a 3-phase motor. You're looking for intermittent duty rather than continuous duty (if you can find it).

An Azure Dynamics AC-55 ought to do the trick. And a whole lotta volts!

Regards,
Lynne

Comments for 55 Ford F-100 Electric Car Conversion

Average Rating starstarstarstarstar

Click here to add your own comments

Rating
starstarstarstarstar 		Ford truck EV conversion suggestion
by: Anonymous

Hi-- I, have a Chevy S-10 pickup EV conversion, and I suggest you do what I did-- build battery boxes to fit UNDER the bed rather than IN it. The advantage is much lower center of gravity for much better handling, and by putting the cells UNDER the bed, you don't permanently deprive yourself of bed cargo space. My bed hinges on the left and opens on the right to put the charging cable close to the (former) fuel filler door. The bed tilts to the side to show off the battery pack and for maintenance. We have a screw - type lifting arm; a hydraulic bed lifter would be more expensive and take more effort to install, but the advantage would be that a screw lifter needs power to go up and down, but a hydraulic lifter only needs power to go up. Also, if you put the bed up and have a power failure, you can't get the bed back down. With a hydraulic lift, you only need to manually bleed off the system to get it to go back down.

Depending on your budget, you may want to simply put the battery boxes on a tray that hinges on all four corners so it swings down and to the side for maintenance and showing off. Use a cable and pulley system to move it up and down.

Good luck!

Bill Dale
Los Angeles

Click here to add your own comments

Join in and write your own page! It's easy to do. How? Simply click here to return to Motor Q&A.

Share this page:
Enjoy this page? Please pay it forward. Here's how...

Would you prefer to share this page with others by linking to it?

  1. Click on the HTML link code below.
  2. Copy and paste it, adding a note of your own, into your blog, a Web page, forums, a blog comment, your Facebook account, or anywhere that someone would find this page valuable.