The forced air blower motor that feeds the traction motor to cool it, is set to run at half speed normally. Mostly because of the noise that I don't want to hear. It only draws about 6 amps at full power, but is the noisiest part of my otherwise silent car.
A thermal switch (120F) monitors the air exiting the traction motor and will turn the blower up to full speed if needed.
The main traction motor has a safety warning switch inside that is switched when the motor reaches 150C as "an early warning of an overheating situation". The motor is rated for operation up to 180C temperature.
For the transmission, or lack thereof, I plan to leave it that way at this point. It's a lot of work to redesign and rebuild the drivetrain to insert a tranny.
I consider the car largely experimental at this point, so out of sheer curiosity want to see if it's really viable as a direct drive. So far in the test drives it is running cool and has no problem accelerating with a light throttle. It only takes tens of battery amps to start it rolling and maybe 250-300 for modest acceleration.
Part of the problem may be in educating my right foot in how to do 'modest acceleration'.
For now, the car can only make about 135 kw, so motor heating is not an issue. But once the rest of the batteries are build and installed that will increase to 345kw, then I will be monitoring temperatures more closely.
Quote:
Originally Posted by allen_dodge
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.
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... |