Robert Kelly smiles when you call him a tinkerer. The evidence is plain to see.
Inside the kitchen of Kelly’s home, a converted school house built in the late 18th century, is a large island with a granite countertop that is located in the middle of the room.
“That was last year’s project,” Kelly says.
Outside his house are large piles of wood, fuel for the wood stove he plans to install. Walk over to the garage, and you’ll see Kelly’s latest project, one that took all summer.
An electric car.
Home-made
But this isn’t some store-bought electric vehicle. It’s home-made. Kelly, a builder and musician, bought a 1997 Volkswagon Jetta for $1,000 from a local auto dealer last spring and spent the whole summer converting it from gas to electric power.
Although he’s still putting the finishing touches on his car, the vehicle is operational, and has a range of between 30 and 50 miles.
“I’ve been to Lee,” Kelly said. “But the speedometer isn’t working, so I’m guessing at my mileage.”
A former mechanic, Kelly said he has always been interested in finding alternative ways to make things operate.
“That’s always fascinated me,” he said.
Research
While spending the last few years researching different vehicles that use alternative fuels, Kelly learned of clubs that have been formed by car converters.
Last spring, he attended a meeting of the New England Electric Auto Association in Killingworth, Conn., which has around 30 members. (Another electric car association is based in Amherst).
“I was pleased to find a support group to deal with all of this,” Kelly said. “Lots of times I head into a project and I don’t know if it will work or not.”
Encouraged by what he learned at the meeting, Kelly said he purchased the Jetta a week after returning to Great Barrington.
“Jettas are pretty solid cars,” he said. “They have a strong frame. People I know have done Jettas before.”
Launching the project
He began converting the car at the end of May. The biggest challenge, Kelly said, was removing all of the car’s internal combustion mechanisms, including the engine and the gas tank. The car still has it’s original transmission, but it’s powered now by a series of 12-volt batteries, the majority of which are located in the trunk for balance.
NEEAA president Bob Rice, a retired Amtrak engineer who lives in Connecticut, sold Kelly an electric motor for $1,500. He said Kelly struggled mightily with a device that powers the electric motor.
“It kept shorting out, but apparently he got it going,” Rice said. “A lot of us are shade-tree mechanics. We’re sort of like Henry Ford except we don’t go into this to make money.”
“When he came here, he started cold,” Rice said, referring to Kelly’s first trip to an association meeting last spring. “But he never gave up. He stuck it out.”
Rice said interest in converting cars from gas to electricity is growing, especially with the increase in gas prices.
“I worked for electric car companies, and when gas was 23 cents a gallon no one cared,” Rice said. “Now it’s a different thing.”
Kelly said the entire conversion cost him $10,000, a price that Rice said is not unusual.
“I tell people that electric cars are an expensive hobby, like gambling, women and boats,” he said.
The flip side is Kelly believes using the electric car will save him around $800 in fuel costs per year.
Local trips
Kelly, who has two other cars, said he plans to use the electric vehicle for local trips. He said his wife, Melinda, a counselor at Muddy Brook Regional Elementary School in Great Barrington, could use the vehicle to drive to and from work.
Melinda Kelly said the conversion project is part of the family’s decision to become more in synch with the environment. Installing the woodstove is another piece of that plan, she said.
She’s not surprised Robert decided to convert a car.
“When he takes something on he really tries to do it the best he can,” she said. “He likes projects like that.”
“This is something he has a mind for,” Melinda said. “I can’t comprehend it, but sometimes I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and he’s up studying diagrams that I can’t figure out.”
Tags: Car, Electric Car, Homemade, Hybrid
