Quote:
Originally Posted by ev99saturn
I am not yet monitoring the exact temp of the motor, but do have 120F sensor watching for that mark.
|
120 is pretty warm, any temperature increase will still affect power and efficiency, so it might be worth the time to put in a gauge and connect a manual override switch to force the fan to operate at full speed. It's likely brushless so I would be surprised if it draws more than a few amps, and if there is a noticeable drop in current draw then it is probably worth leaving the fan on full blast, especially at the strip
. I guess another option would be to somehow lower the temp that the fan kicks on at, but you will just have to measure the cost/benefit of running the cooling fan all the time. As long as your amp gauge includes the power used by the fan, you should be able to easily measure any gain in switching the fan on and off. Since heat is the enemy of all electronics, I would also put a sensor on the speed controller and consider extra cooling if possible, not sure about the one you're using but most DC controllers have at least a 10% efficiency loss or greater, similar to if you were using a transmission. Any reduction in temperature helps so you could even resort to liquid cooling on the electronics, similar to what they use in some high end computers. Also, I've even considered using a relay that only engages at WOT to bypass the speed control altogether but with too much voltage this could be catastrophic.
As far as transmissions, I would leave it exactly the way it is if you do mostly highway driving. I'm gonna go check out some of the vids now...