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Alzax3
29-05-2010, 07:16 PM
Ooooooh tempted to have a new project since this one has a screen! But somebody else is welcome to it as I've really got enough on my plate!

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... ink:top:en (http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=180513866068&fromMakeTrack=true&ssPageName=VIP:watchlink:top:en)

jim73vw
30-05-2010, 05:30 PM
It's sold already apparently, e-mailed him yesterday for info on V5 description.

Alzax3
30-05-2010, 07:00 PM
Still taking bids though....... :ermm: Oh yes - he says it's back on sale due to timewaster.....

jim73vw
30-05-2010, 07:17 PM
Yep, just e-mailed me back. Is called VW beetle on V5, so may have DVLA issues in the future,

CyCo
31-05-2010, 07:31 AM
Dragonfly?

Alzax3
31-05-2010, 08:22 AM
No idea! :confused1:

Spacenut
31-05-2010, 05:23 PM
The only Nova Dragonfly I ever heard of was the petro-electric hybrid built in 1980 by military/industrial process control and monitoring contractors Lee-Dickens Ltd. Intended for publicity purposes to sell a revolutionary electric traction motor, it used an Elam Mk1 bodykit, and this isn't it - I seem to recall it was red or orange in the only colour picture I have seen.

Folk memory, perhaps?

Lauren

jimcub
31-05-2010, 08:29 PM
I'm sure there is a reference to it on a kit car mag which featured a nova, but as i am stuck 100 odd miles from home it'll have to wait and then i have to remember.

Alzax3
05-06-2010, 12:18 PM
£709, it wasn't me (as I forgot to look at when it ran out :whistling: ) but it went for more than I was planning to shell out anyway!

Simpatico
08-06-2010, 11:12 AM
A previous Nova owner who did a bit of digging on the Dragonfly project told me how he got a sinister anonymous phonecall late one night telling him to leave it be. The hint was the the engine was a bit too successful and political/military/oil powers leaned on the company to pull the plug.

JemP
08-06-2010, 12:04 PM
I don't quite get why electric motor development, or any other alternative powered car development would lead to someone being leaned on. If a fully viable alternative engine was produced, you can bet your life that car companies, governments etc. would be falling over themselves to bag the rights.
Imagine if British Leyland had produced a car which ran on hydrogen, had a range of 500 miles, and the looks of the Rover 800? Every other car manufacturer, and power producer would be looking to get hold of rights. The oil companies, and their dirty sticky stuff that polutes the world, would be hung out to dry.

CyCo
08-06-2010, 12:43 PM
I remember two stories I saw on the tv in the early '90's, both here in Oz. One was about an guy who invented a new type of electric engine, capable of pushing cars well past the 200kph barrier.

The second story was another inventor, in a different state, who devloped a new high capacity battery, with a long life, light weight and a relitively small size. Also developed for vehicle applications in mind.

Both were never heard about again.

Spacenut
08-06-2010, 12:53 PM
A previous Nova owner who did a bit of digging on the Dragonfly project told me how he got a sinister anonymous phonecall late one night telling him to leave it be. The hint was the the engine was a bit too successful and political/military/oil powers leaned on the company to pull the plug.

I remember that story too - but Adrian's article was tongue-in-cheek, inferring all sorts of cover-ups and skullduggery, and I seem to remember the anonymous phone caller's identity was also established. I'm sure its true that large industrial concerns might have an interest in buying up and then covering up potentially world-beating technology, but this sort of thing doesn't happen very often as it is very rare for one individual to have a brainwave in isolation - usually several people/establishments have been researching the same thing and its a race to see who publishes first.

The Nova was only supposed to be the taster for the TWC-2 concept, the only drawing of which I saw showed a fairly ungainly looking 4-seater saloon car (albeit with full length gullwing doors IIRC) using the same hybrid power plant. Remember that at this time we were all quaking at the thought of unleaded fuel and catalytic converters, Maggie was promoting lean-burn as an alternative (shame she didn't succeed in that as by all accounts it has a number of advantages over unleaded), so there was a lot of uncertainty over where the industry was heading. Hybrids and electric cars always pop up at these critical moments in history, hoping to gain a foothold. When the technological debate settles down and everyone knows which way they are going, the hybrids and electrics disappear again.

At least now we are slowly being weened off our large gas-guzzlers with Smart cars and the like. Even the Tesla is keeping its head above water and the Prius sells well to a certain clientele. Lee-Dickens probably did the Dragonfly work on the back of some military controls programme, in the same way that the ill-fated Chrysler Patriot turbine-electric flywheel energy storage Le Mans racing car did in the mid-90s. With no realistic commercial market for the technology, the project has nowhere to go...

Not as thrilling as James Bond, but probably closer to the truth :sorry:

It would be nice to know what happened to the Dragonfly Nova though - it obviously did run as a complete car, although this may have been under pure electric rather than hybrid mode.

Lauren

PS - the Patriot was actually a US DoD technology clearance sale - LPG fueled gas turbine from a cruise missile driving a 3-phase alternator using power control electronics from a cancelled nuclear hunter/killer submarine programme and driving a 300 bhp electric drive motor. But the best bit was the energy storage system, which consisted of a carbon-fibre flywheel spinning at 30,000 rpm in a vacuum canister (frictionless). The flywheel was spun up using excess power from the generator and drive motor (regenerative braking) and had to be gimballed so that the gyroscopic torque could be decoupled in corners. The whole system was lifted from a space-based directed-energy weapon following the cancellation of the "Star Wars" missile defence programme. OK, so it was 10 years after the Dragonfly, but even so I think shows the disparity in spending and technological research between the two programmes - neither of which succeeded in setting the automotive world alight!

MicksRedNova
08-06-2010, 01:56 PM
~ neither of which succeeded in setting the automotive world alight!

Putting a Cruise Missile motor in your Nova sounds like a good way of setting something alight! :shock:

:rofl:

Mick

Spacenut
08-06-2010, 09:08 PM
Well, obviously you direct the exhaust away from the bodywork :thumbup:

Bad choice of words on my part :D

I think the point is still valid though :wink:

Lauren

jimcub
09-06-2010, 10:33 PM
But don't use Mick's exhaust or you'll be eating cruise exhaust gas butties :oops2: sorry Mick

ant
10-06-2010, 08:16 PM
the yellow one was the one i went to have a look at!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! not good!