I got to go into south Milwaukee today to meet with two other guys who are building electric cars!
It was held at a warehouse run by the one guy who is a computer recycler and great scrounger/ electrical engineer. He is converting a Dodge Neon to a 300-some volt A/C drive electric car.
The other guy is converting a Toyota picup truck to 288V DC.
Both these guys are way smarter than me. The one guy is an electric genius, and the other works at a place that manufactures brushes for electric motors.
I went there with my brother Wayne, who is visiting right now. He helped me take the transmission out of the Metro originally.
There were also two or three other people there who were just generally interested in electric vehicle building, and were just helping out, or standing around watching.
We figured out a way to get the bolts back into that bearing backer plate thing that was loose. I ended up getting threaded rod, pushing it through the hole, threading it into one of the holes in that little plate, then sliding the end cap back on, smacking it on all the way, then put the other bolt in, take out the threaded rod, and put the first bolt back in again.
Wow, that was a long sentence, but that's what it took to do!
Once the motor was all together, we hooked a battery up to it using an Anderson connector as a power switch. It spun pretty well, and DIDN'T have the wobble and clang that it did the first time I spun it.
The bad news is that the motor FAILED the "high-pot" test. That means that some part of the motor is grounded to the cast iron body of the motor. That's a bad thing, but the motor does work.
Supposedly, if I pull the coils out, clean them and re-wrap them with some sort of thin, non-conductive material, that should solve it.
I also got some great freebies at the workday. The computer salvage guys gave me a couple of Anderson connectors, a bed frame (for battery brackets), and some big shrink wrap (red & black!) for all my cable connectors, as well as about ten feet of 1 gauge cable.
I also brought my 72V controller to show off.
It was a fun day. We were there from 11 am to about 4, including going to lunch at the Chinese buffet.
When I got home, I put the motor on the floor and hooked it up to a battery and charger to run it. I was told to run the battery for about 24 hours and then check to see if the "high-pot" problem was any different.
They also thought that the bearings were probably fine for now, but I should replace them before I really hook everything up for the official setup.
Here's some photos:
Motor with an Anderson connector added and a much better serial jumper cable between the posts.
Pile of stuff Tom gave me at his warehouse.
Bench testing the motor
The motor as it looked when I pulled it from the forklift.
The left end of the motor is the same end as faces the camera in the photo above. The thing on the left end of the motor is a drum brake. I pulled that off and cut it down to make the coupler to go on the other end of the motor.
More updates soon!
More photos at:
http://gallery.me.com/benhdvideoguy#100161
EDIT/UPDATE:
After running the motor for about 45 minutes, the outside of the motor is a little warm. Feeling around on it (being careful not to accidently stick my fingers in there!!!) it was cold in the middle, and warm on the ends. Touching as close as I could to the where the bearings were seemed to be the warmest.
Looks like I will need to replace the bearings.