I was thinking about giving a HF CRX a little extra motivation and improve city gas milage by replacing the starter with a small electric motor. Does this seem like a plausible / good idea, or am I just crazy?

I then would need a system to kill and restart the engine on demand based on rpms and either throttle load or a switch. Any ideas for this type of system?


This is basically a school project, and I am trying to develop a high gas milage car.

 

Uhhh, the starter is a small electric motor, which uses gear reduction to increase torque. The main problem with your scenario is the ridiculous amount of current a 12v motor has to draw to create usable amounts of power. Real hybrid cars use much much higher voltages to overcome this.

Also, the ring gear that the starter meshes with is not really designed to handle the stress of being under high load.

I am not saying this is impossible, but there are big hurdles to overcome.

 

You are crazy