I do remember. It’s changed quite a bit since you last saw it. I think you might have seen the starting strip down of the 110 project back then as well.
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On the heater front, it would be quite easy to put one into the current setup. I have enough space in the engine bay to mount a HV water heater, again the Outlander heater is commonly used. Then I can route it through the hoses from the cabin heater matrix that already come out into the engine bay. Alternatively I could replace the heater matrix with a HV PTC heater for direct heat, then route the HV cables in the same manner as the original hoses. But that is a bit more work
If I had some spare battery capacity for my current commute, or a smaller commute I would have definitely do the water heater option. As it is I generally just take the spare ICE car if the windscreen has frosted up and take that as the sign that it’s too cold for the MG that day. The rest of the time I use a coat and heated seats.
On a related note I am putting a PTC heater element from a VW ID3 into my Land Rover 110 heater box. Actually that part I have already done and tested, it can push out up to 10kW of heat! So the Land Rover will not be cold, nor will the windscreen take long to defrost. But the battery on that will be at least 50kWh.
Suspension wise I did get all the spheres refurbished during the original conversion process. However I am putting some extra weight over the front which is probably not ideal. One idea I have seen in the past is to replace the front spheres with that from the Rover Metro, same subframe but the spheres were designed for the weight of the engine. So they should be calibrated better for taking the weight and also be a straight swap.
As for F or TF for a future conversion, current UK rules make the F more favourable. As pre 2001 vehicles are eligible for 0 tax as you can change the engine size to 0cc. Anything newer (like my F by two months) is taxed on CO2 emissions which cannot be changed on a V5 logbook. I also personally prefer the look of the F headlights.
However there are some changes on the way regarding conversion regulations (not anytime soon but the cogs are moving) so this may change things.
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Thought I might give a bit of an update on this as quite a bit has changed in the last year.
I took it off the road around about July last year as the insurance ran out and I had some upgrades that I wanted to do.
Firstly I upgraded the battery to a 12kWh BMW hybrid pack as I mentioned in my last post. I also upgraded the control system from the ECU that I designed initially to the “Zombieverter”. An open source ECU from Damien Maguire, more information of which can be found on the Open Inverter Forums.
The Zombieverter turns a lot of the conversion into almost a plug and play setup. Utilising canbus to talk to the components as if they were still in their original environments. I had to do a bit of work in incorporating the Outlander motor control messages into Zombie, but with some help from the Open inverter forums it wasn’t so bad and now the Outlander Motor has native support in this application.
The Zombieverter already supported the Outlander Charger and BMW battery pack contactor box so that was a very easy setup.
I also removed the gear linkages completely and just left it in 2nd gear. I replaced the gear stick with a simple Forward, Neutral, Reverse switch. I also switched out the radio for a
single din android auto touchscreen. I pulled out the middle vents and 3d printed a mount for my BMS display and also a holder for my phone. Still haven’t gotten around to getting any more of the dash dials to work, however I might do a bit of work on that later this year.
Back on the road in November, the perfect time for convertibles! Still no heating which makes the commute to work a bit of a slog in winter. But it’s proved very reliable. The cold weather has a big effect on range, in the winter months when the battery temperature goes below 0c it will struggle to do the 28 miles to work. Now in summer I can get over 40 miles with the same battery with an efficiency of around 4.5 miles per kWh.
In spring time regen was added to the list of Zombieverter features and I was part of the initial testing of that feature. Regen is something I thought I didn’t really need. But well tuned regen on the throttle is completely transformational to driving. It gives you effortless control over your speed with just one pedal and I rarely find myself needing the brakes anymore. I have it setup to light up the brake lights if my regen goes past a certain percentage, which I think is rather important!
I haven’t got anymore photos, because honestly I don’t take much care of the aesthetics of this car so it doesn’t look great. It’s my daily workhorse, rear window is covered in Duct tape where the plastic has split, the interior is pretty messy, and the outside is rather run down. But it never lets me down and saves me £10 a day in fuel commuting to work.
Future plans are to maybe look at getting some of the dash dials working again. I also need to look at the suspension again. Not sure if it’s cheap Poly bushes or something off with the hydrolastic suspension but it’s a very hard ride.
Apart from that I don’t really plan on doing that much to this car in the near future. I have a Land Rover 110 I’m in the middle of converting right now. When that is done I might revisit the F and maybe do another one from the ground up. I’m thinking a bigger pack, around 24kWh, with CCS fast charging would give me all the range I need. Maybe a slightly more powerful motor, 100kW rather than the 70kW I have now would probably be nice. Also I might have to invest in a cabin heater next time around!
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£3-4k is probably around the cost of materials these days to convert a small car like an MGF. In the last couple of years especially the cost of batteries have dropped through the floor as the new generation of EVs start getting written off.I love the engineering that goes into these conversions but for me the parts just seem too expensive to justify. £ 12k is certainly too far beyond the cost threshold for me.
I would certainly be interested if it were practical to repurpose most of the necessary parts from a crash damaged EV that could be picked up for £3 or £4 k with maybe another £ 500 for odd materials plus the cost of a donor non runner F/ TF .
The two EV conversions I have done/currently in the middle of since my MG I have spent more on restoration than conversion.
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