It is a fantastic experience once completed properly.
On Tue, Aug 22, 2023 at 12:58 PM, THOMAS VANDERMEULEN<tvinypsi@gmail.com> wrote:Duncan,
You're in a situation similar to one in which I found myself several years ago, and had the same thought as you: maybe it's time to go electric. I took the DIY route, as have a number of other posters to this discussion, and purchased a. number of components from Thunderstruck Motors out of Southern California. I'm still a believer in repowering with electric, but based on my own experience, I would caution you (and anyone else considering this modification path) to think long and hard about strategy and budget.
The fact that I'm still not in the water after 4-years of effort has much more to do with life changes and the fact that my boat needed more rehabilitative work than the repowering. But my guess is, that with an '89 Pearson, you'll likely also find many other things to do to the boat while it's out of the water.
And don't get me wrong. The folks at Thunderstruck have been very supportive, and their products seemed to work well enough on my development/test bench in the basement of my house. But there are two potentially problematic aspects of a DIY repowering that folks don't seem to talk much about: Instrumentation; and Physical installation.
There's a tendency for folks to focus on the motor, the controller, and the battery pack. But all of these things have to be securely installed in the boat somewhere, and then interconnected. How will battery monitoring information be communicated to you and the operator, who is likely sitting in the cockpit? Will there be any instrumentation within the cabin space? Is your instrumentation compliant with all the relevant regulations and guidelines such that a surveyor will give you a thumbs up? Will your batteries be permanently installed, or do you need to pull them out seasonally? Wiring, connectors, and routing of wiring -- instrumentation more so than the main propulsion power cables -- are all potentially challenging to an installation. On a boat the size of yours (and ours, which is also an older 27-footer) getting access to the physical spaces where elements are to be installed can be difficult even for flexible and fit people, but for aging (like me) or less fit persons, getting one's body into the positions necessary to do the installation and connections can be darned near impossible.
I don't know anything about your background, and it may be that none of the above will be difficult for you. But others will be reading this posting, and I'm just trying to share some of the things I've encountered along the way that I didn't know when I sent my first order to Thunderstruck.
Folks need to understand that the cost of a full installation goes way beyond the sailboat motor kit comprised of the motor, controller, and throttle control. Battery storage, charging, monitoring, and control comprise a subsystem in and of themselves. Instrumentation and related wiring comprise another subsystem. In terms of the physical installation, it's easy to overlook such questions as how am I going to get my batteries in and out of the boat, and secure them as required by regs? A full 200 Amp Hour pack of 48-volt LiFePO batteries will weigh over 200 lbs once assembled and take up a fair amount of space.
I'm in Michgan, so I felt it would be best to be able to take my LiFePO batteries off the boat for winter storage. I had to choose between building and rebuilding the full battery every season, or working out an approach that made that procedure simpler. I went with building four 12-volt packs. But that approach required custom-built boxes and building my own wiring harnesses to connect the battery cells to the battery management module. It also led to the additional question of how to keep all these elements reasonably water-tight while under way.
Another item that's only tangentially related to an electric repowering but something anyone who undertakes it should consider, is what about my stuffing box and cutless bearing, and the related issue of whether or not it's physically possible to get good alignment between the new power source and your existing prop shaft (distance and angle).
My latest speed bump is indicative of the type of thing that can happen, which even the best planning won't have allowed for. Everything worked fine on my test bed, but during installation on the boat, I inadvertently over-stressed a wire going to the connector plugged into the battery management module (BMSC) evidently distorting the contacts within the connector -- a simple 6-pin push on connector costing about $3. Between having initially misdiagnosed the problem as a failed BMSC, and the misdirection of the replacement connector by the USPS, it will end up being yet another 2-weeks of delay before actually getting my system operational within the boat and continuing all the subsequent installation steps. The critical path of any project plan can easily be altered by unforeseen factors and events!
So in summary, here's my advice: bite the bullet on the cost of a full, customized installation by a qualified company; or be prepared for technical and physical challenges you can't even imagine yet, not to mention the cost over-runs that result from the DIY learning curve.
Okay, I've gone on long enough, and there will be some on this discussion board who'll discount what I'm saying because they had an easy time of it.
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