T-Pain Is On A Boat: Re: [Electric Boats] Running an electric motor connected to the old Gasoline engine?

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Re: [Electric Boats] Running an electric motor connected to the old Gasoline engine?

Dear Need,

That's a bad idea. Electric power is all about efficiency. Driving the prop "through" the Vire engine would add a huge amount of drag to the system.

If you are very mechanically clever you might design a clutch system so either the motor or the engine could drive the prop or the engine could drive the motor to recharge the battery or the motor could drive the engine to start it.

Denny

----- Original Message -----

From: nd4speed_66

To: electricboats@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Monday, November 02, 2009 4:24 PM

Subject: [Electric Boats] Running an electric motor connected to the old Gasoline engine?

Greetings,

Im new to this whole electric engine scene, but was curious if its possible to use an electrict engine to spin my old gas engine?

I have a Vire 6 BVr, http://www.vire6.info/, which has a front mounted crank pully system with a combo start/alternator. The alternator died years ago, so its esentially just a starter. What I was interested in doing is replacing this starter with a Mars Brushless electric motor. This would allow me to use it to start the gas engine or leave the ingination off and drive the boat via DC power alone.

Im assuming I would need to beef up the belt and pully as its currently a V groove. But would it be too inefficient to spin the single piston engine and transmission to drive the boat compared to having just the electric motor spinning the prop?

Thanks for your response!

Happy Motoring