For the price of a good brushed motor, I'd go with the brushed motor, see how I like it, then after having gotten the cheap motor along with cheap controller, along with the costlier batteries, decide on the second year if I want to upgrade to the more efficient brushless motor with the costlier controllers and such.
As it is, I never motor more than a few miles and usually at about 3-4 knots tops. It's not as if I expect to all of a sudden have the need to motor 20 miles at 6+knots because I now have an electric motor.
The idea of making a boat(especially a sailboat), electric can be simple as all get out to initially see how well it performs. I always feel, the simpler the better . . . to a point.
John Francis
Port Clinton
You and your new boat sound like a perfect candidate for E power. If you don't need to motor too far the batteries will weigh no more than the A4 and will take up a lot less space.In theory you can run a brush motor with no controller but you would need the wiring figured out ahead of time. Pretty simple to bypass the controller but you just get zero or WOT as you operate the battery disconnect switch. Most boats won't go very far at WOT. Running at 50% of full voltage would require some jumpers made up ahead of time to reconfigure the bank plus some scrambling around in the bilge at a probably stressful time.Having a redundant controller already mounted next to the active one might be a better plan B if you are that worried.Has anyone ever had a controller failure in a properly sized system?Denny----- Original Message -----From: DougSent: Wednesday, March 17, 2010 9:12 AMSubject: [Electric Boats] Possible C27 conversionHi All,
I joined a few weeks back and have been pouring through postings and searching the internet. Great resource.
In February I bought a Catalina 27 sailboat (not my first and probably not my last) with an Atomic 4 and have been repairing and updating as needed. The boat will be sailed in the mid south on a lake/river so will not be required to travel more than a few miles if the wind dies. I believe this would be a good candidate for electric conversion, not to mention my dislike of gasoline.
If I do a conversion in the future I will probably do it myself. I have been thinking of the Mars brushless motor and Sevcon controller offered from numerous vendors vs a Etek brushed or other brand and Alltrax or Curtis controllers.
Connection to the prop shaft would either be belt reduction or gear reduction.
Would it not be prudent to use a brushed motor so in case of controller failure and no spare available one could limp back to the slip by direct connection to less voltage?
I'm kind of undecided on which path to take. Also I'm no stranger to electrical/electronics as my degree was in electronics and I dabble in electric RC helicopters.
One thing I would like to see is follow up from owners of previous installations on performance and longevity of the systems.
Thanks for your thoughts
Doug
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