[dcb] posted about his work on the mpgduino mpguino. The project uses an arduino with a LCD display to monitor fuel consumption based on vehicle speed and the pulses of the fuel injectors being fired. It’s definitely an interesting project given current fuel costs and the passive nature of the project. You can easily tap the wires needed for the monitor and remove it without voiding your warranty (not that we really care).
Transportation Hacks1635 Articles
Hack Your Prius With Prius Batteries
Adding extra battery capacity to hybrids is becoming pretty common, but this one is better than the average lead acid trunk fest. The pack was built from three prius NiMH packs picked up from salvage yards. These batteries can’t simply be bolted together, but with some research and effort you can save some nickel from the junk yards and cut your fuel bill.
Maker Faire 2008: Electric Motorcycles
Builder [Justin Gray] brought a pair of electric motorcycles to Maker Faire last weekend. Pictured above is the R84, which has 28 LiFePo cells and an 84v AC induction drive providing 54HP. All of that is stuffed in a 2000 Yamaha R1 frame. You can buy it now for $14,000.
EFI Your Motorcycle
This one’s In honor of my new project bike. [wildwestsyndey] converted his Suzuki DR 350 from the stock carbs to EFI using the megasquirt EFI controller and a custom machined throttle body. You can find a few pictures of the conversion here. To handle the ever annoying need for a high pressure fuel pump, he adapted an in-tank scooter pump with a machined mini-reservoir to fit in-line with the original tank. For more motorcycle builds, check out the megasquirt success stories forum.
Electric (off-road) Skateboard
[Joe] sent along this sweet little instructable on making an electric skateboard. I like this one especially for the how-to nature of the build. [Vurp] used an off the shelf mountain board with a brake addition, a 300w scooter motor/controller and a pair of 12v SLA batteries. Now that I’m back on campus, I might just be tempted to build something along these lines. Just in time for this electric vehicle post, [Darin] sent in the forkencycle.
Inexpensive MPG Modding
[basjoos] modded [via] the body of his ’92 Honda Civic – and managed to improve his fuel efficiency from 50-60MPG up to 95MPG for about $400. Even more interesting is the SuperMID (Translated) that he added to the car to monitor his fuel efficiency. It’s based on an ATMega8 that reads the CAN bus and displays realtime MPG information an a character LCD. The SuperMID is popular for Prius modders because the on-board display maxes out at a paultry 99MPG. If micro-controller’s aren’t your thing, [Atilla] put together his own CAN bus decoder and ported his code to a Zaurus SL-C700. He even added voice feedback notification for certain data events.
Nightvision Car Heads Up Display
[alti] wants night vision for his car, so he picked up a nightmax night vision camera that has a built in LCD. The plan is to mount the display so that it will reflect off the windshield of his car to create a simple HUD. Unfortunately the image gets reflected from the inside and outside of the windshield. The discussion in the forum is getting pretty lengthy, but it’s an interesting project.
