Wednesday, May 12, 2021

Re: [electricboats] Naive newbie questions

My 2 cents:
1.  Smaller motors are more likely to overheat.  Larger motors have more mass and convert more of the energy to torque.  You can offset this limitation a little by using higher voltage.  That's a trick that manufacturers do to save money:  use an undersized motor at a higher voltage.  Since most scooter and bike motors are sized at 48VDC, this scooter motor is already probably undersized for a scooter.  Trying to power your 27ft sailboat with it is pushing that limitation even further, and I think you are going to find out it is severely undersized.
2. Stick with 48VDC for safety reason since you are not an expert with electricity.  Even people who are experts usually go with 48VDC.  
3.  Since you are interested in experimenting and learning, I recommend trying to find a DC electric motor in a junkyard or something from a forklift or golf cart.  There are lots of youtube videos of people who have installed cheap used motors and lead acid batteries.  When you are on a budget you can make it work with some tinkering, but remember you don't have a parking lot out there, so make sure you do your experiments at the dock and when you go out, have a plan for what happens if you break down.  
4.  If you decide to go with a kit, I'll share my experience about Thunderstruck: 
I have a 37ft sailboat and have a 10kW Thunderstruck kit.  I had selected the motor and controller before knowing about Thunderstruck, and was pricing it all out and getting ready to order when I found Thunderstruck's website and realized they had all the same components I was looking for in a kit that didn't cost much more than the individual parts, AND it came with the wiring harness, instructions, AND the controller was already programmed.  I've been very happy with the outcome and with the help I got from them.  For your boat you might be able to get away with the 5kW motor.  The scooter motor though is probably going to be a waste of your money and not worth it in my opinion.

Good luck and let us know how it goes.

Darin
_._,_._,_

Groups.io Links:

You receive all messages sent to this group.

View/Reply Online (#31406) | Reply To Group | Reply To Sender | Mute This Topic | New Topic
Your Subscription | Contact Group Owner | Unsubscribe [newarmyguitar24@gmail.com]

_._,_._,_

No comments:

Post a Comment