Do you have a car you absolutely love, but that gets such terrible gas mileage that you can’t justify driving it? Maybe you have a chassis that’s in beautiful shape in your garage, but its engine shot a rod through the block a few months back and it’s just been sitting ever since. Well, a team of Australia’s top engineer-scientists have developed a novel method of converting your gas car to an EV without need for heavy batteries or enormous motors: Just weld a garage door motor to the differential, and plug the whole thing into the wall.
The mad geniuses over at Garbage Time have done it again. After pulling the Barra inline-six from a Ford Falcon, Wade and James didn’t want to push the shell all the way across the garage to be picked up for scrap with their bare hands. Instead, the pair decided to bring the old Falcon into the future, outfitting it with a full 750 watts of electric power and an extension cord.
It’s basically perfect
That setup didn’t exactly account for “pedals,” but that’s fine. A single switch mounted atop the driver’s airbag controls whether the rear motor is on or off, and the steering still seems to work. What else could a car need? Sure, the car may not be fast, but it does drive. It also can’t shift into reverse without rewiring the plug on the extension cord, but that’s fine. Oh, yeah, and you have to be very careful not to run over the extension cord — though, if you do, you can just coat the newly-stripped cable in tape and mount it to the door so it doesn’t touch the oil leak.
This Ford Falcon EV is likely the simplest EV swap out there — it’s achievable by anyone with the barest knowledge of welding and just a Home Depot run’s worth of parts. It’s flawless, and I can think of no better way to get that car you love back on the road.
