Re: [electricboats] cruising Amsterdam Canals

Twenty (20) years later and I'm still driving my boat with the ETEK brush motor I bought new in 2003.  I went thru 3 sets of brushes in that time (and no new sets were available until this past year!).  I cleaned up the armature a bit and have 3 new sets of brushes…sounds about as good that it ever did.

 

From: electricboats@groups.io [mailto:electricboats@groups.io] On Behalf Of Ryan Sweet
Sent: Friday, July 21, 2023 10:37 AM
To: electricboats@groups.io
Subject: Re: [electricboats] cruising Amsterdam Canals

 

Just to add to the chorus - don't buy the used AGM batteries. Wait til you can afford LFP. 

 

As for the brushed motor : I've met plenty of folks with older diy electric setups with brushed motors from golf carts and fork lifts that are still going strong years later. I think it's important to not ever go over the voltage rating of the motor as it will blow it out quickly. So if you can acquire the motor cheaply it's likely worth a try. Even if your installation are is small I am guessing it's still smaller than any diesel you remove, and so you have room to try it and later replace it if it doesn't work out. 

On Jul 21, 2023, at 10:09, twowheelinguy via groups.io <twowheelinguy=yahoo.com@groups.io> wrote:



Elwin,

 

I've been using what is essentially a brushed, series wound golf cart motor on steroids in the Arc for over 12 years and thousands of miles and it's still going strong in the marine environment. While I've spent a lot of that time in fresh water rivers, I've also kept it in a salt water for quite a few years too. I have an Alltrax DCX-500 controller that's I've had a few minor issues with  but found the people at Alltrax very helpful so I would reach out to them for more info.

 

As for the AGM batteries, lead is dead, imo, unless you can get them thrown in for free I wouldn't bother with them. Don't know if you can get any of the Chinese LiFePo batteries over there but they are very reasonable and I've had good luck so far with several of the cheapest ones I could find. You can't hardly build your own for what they sell them on Amazon here in the states. 

 

Capt. Carter

www.shipofimagination.com

 

On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 09:39:21 AM EDT, Reuben Trane via groups.io <rjtrane=me.com@groups.io> wrote:

 

 

I've been using Motenergy motors on Sunshine for several years - I have Sevcon controllers. You can reach out to Motenergy for support. 

the motor mount/reduction pulleys supplied by www.thunderstruck-ev.com works well - mine gave a reduction of 3:1 to get max prop RPM to 800. 

You'd be better off building an LFP battery using Winston (or equivalent) cells if it's in your budget.