Quote:
Originally Posted by type2teach
Update:
I finally got some time to work on the EV. Now, the EV won't even roll out of the garage at a low speed. It seems like whatever is happening is getting worse. It *starts* to move and then stops. It rolls a tiny bit, maybe half an inch, before the episode starts happening.
So I took the two cables from the controller off the motor and with the controller on and my hand mechanicaly controlling the pot, I measured the volts going to the motor. It put out way more volts than I expected very quickly. It went from 0 to 90v within a very small movement of the pot arm.
But I took that to mean that the controller was responding appropriately.
So I dropped the motor (easier said than done) and with it firmly secured, I used jumper cables to run 6v to it and then 12v to it from my battery pack. At 6v I could barely stop the motor from turing with my hand. 12v was too much to stop, and it sounded like the RPMs were going up and up if I left the cables attached.
There's nothing obvious out of place on the motor, but I don't have alot of experience looking at electric motors so I could be looking at something that's out of place but I don't know it.
Any suggestions of what I could/should test next and pointers on how to do it?
Thanks!  |
Next update:
I had a friend (an ME) come over and give me a hand and we dropped the motor to inspect it. We couldn't find anything obviously wrong with it. Then we hooked the pos and neg cables back up to it without reinstalling the motor into the van and tried it like that. At first, the same thing would happen- spin at low throttle and then just stop. But after a while, it started running normally! The problem appeared to "fix itself". Now I've been working on cars long enough to know that the vast majority of problems don't just fix themselves and I was skeptical. I reinstalled the motor and sure enough, nothing had been "fixed", the van started to roll and then stopped, just like before.
So today I finally had some free time and wanted to test the POT
-what is the best way to test the POT?
-I also stuck a vmeter on the Pos and Neg cables at the motor and by hand moved the POT to see what voltage was going to motor, and the highest it ever got was around 11v. (I have a 120v pack).
-Why would it measure lots of V with the motor NOT hooked up and just a few with the motor hooked up?
Any thoughts?
TIA!