Profile for: kraln - Kraln's RX-8 Blog

Jeff Katz is an engineer and serial entrepreneur who has founded companies across a wide variety of industries including security, finance, and IT. He's worked everything from electrical engineering through firmware, cloud architecture, engineering management and CTO, for startups as well as multinationals such as Telefónica and Daimler.

Posts by this author

Bodyshop Manual Overlay on 01 October 2023 - Posted in Musings
Battery Volume Exploration on 01 October 2023 - Posted in Mechanical Mischief
Motor Musings on 30 September 2023 - Posted in Hacking Electronics
Roughing out the motor location on 30 September 2023 - Posted in Mechanical Mischief
Body Shop Manual on 28 September 2023 - Posted in Mechanical Mischief
Up on a Lift on 28 September 2023 - Posted in Project Updates
NeRF or Nothing on 27 September 2023 - Posted in Musings
Donor Batteries Collected on 19 September 2023 - Posted in Project Updates

About

I bought an RX-8 with the intention of converting it to run on Hydrogen. Conveniently, the hydrogen fueling network where I live was shutdown shorly after I brought the car home. After driving the car around with the original drivetrain for much longer than I originally intended, it started to lose significant power. Rather than simply replacing the existing (fun, but unreliable) drivetrain with a rebuild, or a different (boring, but more reliable) gasoline engine, I'd want to return to the original goal of making my RX-8 zero-emissions.

The goal is an RX-8 that, from the outside and inside, is indistinguishable from stock. All safety and comfort features should still work, and the car shouldn't gain too much additional weight. The original structure should stay as intact as possible, and the handling and dynamics should be as close to as-delivered. It should still be fun to drive but reliable as a daily, and it should still zoom-zoom.