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New Corbin Sparrow 2000 Owner's 2000 Mile Review
by
Phil Salkiephil@howman.com
Corbin Sparrow # 38
In October, 1997 my household put down a $1000 deposit on a Corbin Sparrow,
the U.S. made single-passenger three-wheeled electric motorcycle which was
being developed in Hollister, California.
In March, 2000 we took delivery of Sparrow number 38, the third unit of the
2000 model year. Lime Green. Grey interior with Lime Green seat piping.
$14,000 price tag, plus transport and dealer prep, less deposit.
For those unfamiliar, the Corbin Sparrow
http://www.corbinmotors.com/sparrow.htm
is a fiberglas/foam core composite shell with embedded metal plates for
structural support. Two front wheels using standard automotive tires are
steered by a GT Grant tilt-column steering wheel. 13 Optima 12V 60 AH
spiral-cell lead acid batteries through a 600 Amp Raptor controller drive a
20 HP 156V DC electric motor. A toothed belt (Harley-style) directly drives
the single rear wheel from there. The vehicle registers and insures as a
motorcycle, although in New Jersey, only State Farm was interested in
providing insurance. ($317.00 covers $300,000 liability, plus
comprehensive/collision, for the year.) In most states, no helmet or
motorcycle endorsement on your driver's license is required. The battery
pack is charged by a Zivan charger - you choose 110V or 220V before
delivery. 110V brings the pack to 90% plus in about five hours, with the
remaining 10% taking another two or three hours. The 220V version will
charge the pack to full in 3 to 4 hours, and a dual-voltage charger is in
the works "somewhere in Italy".
As of this week we have put just over 2000 miles on the vehicle, and I
thought this would be a good spot to field a report.
We purchased the vehicle through a local dealer, who received the shipment
from California, did some tweaking and testing (which fell under the category
of "dealer prep"), and trailered the Sparrow right to our driveway.
He also went through each *line* of the owner's guide with us, expounding
and commenting on every detail, like how the windshield wiper was not what
you expect on a car, but a lot better than on a motorcycle :-).
He didn't try to hide any of the negative bits, telling me about how his
Raptor controller had failed, and how the factory had worked to correct
the problem and tried to identify all the units with bad pre-charge circuit
components. His shop Sparrow had shipped with an earlier combined
controller/charger, which the factory replaced with the final components
in the field.
Peter Senkowski, Corbin's electrical guru, spent weeks in the field
retrofitting vehicles at dealers around the country, documenting the various
improvements they had come up with in the year since the first dealer
demonstration vehicles shipped out. Many of those improvements made it into
the final product, and new ideas are entering the production line all the time.
Our initial impression of the Sparrow was very positive. The paint job was
superb, combined with very good attention to detail in the seat, dashboard,
and carpeting. The little storage compartment behind the seat seemed too
small for anything useful at first, but would later prove to hold a 25 foot
10GA SJ cord, a 50 foot 16GA cord, several CD's, tools, silicone spray, and
fix-a-flat, my laptop bag (not the small one, either) and digital camera.
It's also held a 60 pound bag of turkey chow (not at the same time!), chinese
lunch for the office, or three smallish bags of groceries. Our dealer left
his plates on when he delivered the thing, so Anne and I both got to try a
short test-drive before he left. Initially the motor was quite noisy - it was
said that that would quiet as the brushes wore in, and it did. Acceleration
was surprisingly good - I thought a 1600 pound vehicle (including driver) would
be much slower with only 20 HP pushing it, but it can get out of its own way
quite well.
After delivery, we had a week (while hunting down insurance) to look, but
not drive. Once this purgatory was over, we began the task of working in
the battery pack, starting with a five mile trip, a recharge, a ten mile
trip, a recharge, and on up to 35 miles. Let me tell you, driving a lime
green sneaker around *surely* turns heads. It's been two months now,
and I don't think anyone's crashed a car from looking at us drive by, but
I'm sure there were some close calls (including a bicyclist who turned his
head so long he hit a curb - no injuries except some wounded pride, though.)
As luck would have it, that first week we drove the Sparrow, we had a
controller failure. It occurred during charging, after a 15 mile run. I
was standing nearby and heard a "pop-pop" sound, which I tend to associate
with capacitors blowing up. On opening the door (there's one door, on what
we normally consider to be the passenger side) I smelled burned electronics,
but not very much - almost small enough to think I imagined it. However, on
trying to move the vehicle after charging was complete, the controller
refused to pull in the main contactor, or show its "ready" LED. This was on
a Friday morning. A call to the west coast confirmed my suspicion, and
Corbin's helpful staff shipped a new controller for Saturday delivery. Since I
said I was capable of changing it myself, Peter took a few minutes to go
over the details of the swap with me, and gave me pointers on setting up the
LVDT throttle adjustments. Saturday morning brought a downpour, a new
controller, a tarpaulin, and a working Sparrow after about an hour with some
wrenches. We now have nearly two thousand miles on the new controller, and
this one has shown no inclinations toward trouble.
The only other maintenance item we ran into was *entirely* our fault - after
a heavy spring rain, we backed the Sparrow right off the edge of the
driveway and into ankle deep mud. The rear tire got so bogged down, we
couldn't manage to push the thing out of the mud. In trying to run the car
while one of us pushed, we managed to get mud and rocks in between the wheel
pulley and the belt, and stressed the thing to the point of snapping the
drive belt. Another call to Corbin, and a belt arrived next morning UPS
red - free of charge! (Since I knew it was my fault, I tried to pay for it,
but they wouldn't hear of it...) I didn't want to pester the dealer with a
problem of my creation, so I bought a 2-ton floor jack for fifty bucks, took
some 2x6 wood pieces to cushion the top of the jack, and lifted the sparrow
up (after having some friends help push it back onto the driveway.) The
entire belt installation took just over an hour, requiring nothing but some
8mm and 1/4" allen keys. Not a procedure I'd relish doing on the side of a
highway, but certainly possible. The new belt performed perfectly, and now
has about 1000 miles on it (on pavement, not mud. Repeat after me, Phil - The
Sparrow is an ON ROAD VEHICLE. The Sparrow is an ON ROAD VEHICLE. Good.
As for driving range, I've got a 41 mile commute to work, Anne has a 35 miler,
and we both have 110V outlets available at work. We arrive at work and back
home with plenty of power, even though home is up one heck of a long hill.
In fact, the only time we have managed to come close to running low on power
is when we charge up, let the vehicle sit a full day, and one of us tries to
drive 40 miles the next day. Both times we've tried this, we came close to
empty after 40 miles of mixed city and highway (65 MPH) driving. All
indications are that the culprit is cold weather and cold batteries - charging
keeps the pack warm, so in the morning, there's a bit of extra power available.
Letting the pack cool to 32 degrees robs enough go juice to make the difference
in the winter. Preliminary indications from our few (so far) runs in warmer
weather are that the vehicle consumes about 15% less power at 70 degrees F
than at 32 degrees. Some of that could be the battery pack, and some could be
the motor winding temperature, and some the thicker wheel lubrication and
decreased tire flex with stiffer cold rubber.
The E-Meter display is a great help at teaching you to "drive electric". I
usually run in amps mode at first, then switch to volts later in the drive.
There's an analog ammeter, too, which makes a nice complement to the E-Meter
in volts mode - I first thought it was useless, but it is nice to have both
visible at the same time when you're worried about range issues. You do learn
relatively quickly that it's better to coast up to a light than power up and
slam on the brakes.
At this point, our battery pack should be about at its peak for charge
retention. You should figure to draw about 1 amp hour per mile travelled,
perhaps less if you don't accelerate too hard (this morning my 41 mile trip
took 34 AH), and my feeling is that right now I should be able to draw
over 50 amp hours from the pack. Colder weather increases the AH/mile
ratio, but I still make it to work, even in 32 degree weather. I've seen
expected distance ratings from 40 to 70 miles, but I'll go with a max of 50
for right now. Real summer weather may improve things - we'll see...
The Sparrow is amazingly stable at highway speeds, showing no tendency to be
blown around or bothered by trucks passing. Cornering is solid - I haven't
had the guts to really see how hard you can push it, but so far I've barely
gotten it to feel light on one side, and I'm turning as fast as I feel any
need to. Noise is down to a belt-related squeek-squeek kind of sound, which
seems audible only from inside the cab. A healthy dose of silicone spray on
the toothed surface of the belt every few days shuts that up quite nicely,
and may even help the range a tiny amount. I haven't found the top of it's
highway speed yet, but it seems to do 75 MPH quite well...
Fit and finish are overall less than Maserati-like, with some of the
fiberglass pieces not *quite* matching up perfectly, but honestly better
than I expected from a hand-formed, hand-built piece. Everyone who sees it
is impressed by the quality, the gloss of the frighteningly green paint, the
roominess inside and the comfort of the Corbin seat (although Auto Week makes
a good point about it really wanting some lumbar support...)
Our dealer was right about the windshield wiper - Rain-X is *definitely* your
friend. The sharp curve of the windshield makes the wiper take a c-curve
set, and that just sort of rides back and forth on the window, refusing to
clear anything towards the center of the glass. I've removed the blade and
bent it to be more straight, and tightened the wiper arm spring - that helped
quite a bit, and moved the cleared patch from lower right to center of the
windshield..
The tail-lamp assembly is equipped with a brake-lamp flasher, which is very
noticable in the dark hours, but the lamp is a bit too dim in daylight for
my tastes. I changed the 1157 lamp out for a 2057, somewhat brighter. I'll
probably change the orange turn signal/marker lamps out for LED units, just
because they look cooler (and they *are* brighter). I'll also be adding an
audible turn-signal indicator inside - when the CD player is running, it's
all too easy to run with your turn signal blinking aimlessly...
The headlamp is a standard rectangular sealed-beam, and surprisingly bright.
I may replace it with an H4 capsule type, with intent to put in a yet brighter
lamp, assuming there's enough amperage headroom on the DC-DC converter which
takes 156 volt power and provides the 12 volts to run lamps, windows, and
the like.
The thing that's most surprised us, though, is the very positive reaction we
get from the public. Nearly everyone who sees it understands that it's a
supplemental vehicle, not a replacement for your gasoline car. They also
seem to be able to picture themselves driving a Sparrow to work and back,
and few think the $14,000 price tag is an obstacle - the most common
reaction to that is "a lot less than a full dress Harley", or maybe "That's
not bad, these days...". Kids think it's the coolest thing ever, and aren't
put off by the size or strange shape or electricness. That's worth a lot,
as today's kids are tomorrow's consumers. We must have given out fifty
brochures in the first weeks, and we're now giving out stickers, since Corbin
doesn't have the new updated literature back from printing yet. Another very
common reaction is "That makes sense. This is the car for the year 2000...".
The CD player works fine, although when the motor controller is engaged I'm
afraid there's no chance of any AM or FM radio reception. Speakers are
limited to two small units in the back of the seat - I'll probably hide a
couple under the dash some day when I'm bored.
While I could wish for more range, a better windshield wiper (they have a
vertical articulated wiper in the works, BTW, for future models), or a seat
which could move forward and back (it's integrated with the battery
compartment cover, so it don't move. The seatback tilts, though...), I'm
happy as the proverbial clam with Sparrow #38, and I expect there'll be
another in our household, although we may have to wait until 2001 for
Corbin to catch up with their backlog of orders. :-)
Yours from inside the green menace,
Phil Salkie (and Jen Hamilton and Anne Troop, too)
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