Have I found my forkencycle motor?

[Wonderboy]

I did make it back to the junkyard, and managed to rip out all of the guts (yes, including a little battery meter ):


There was a guy there who was curious about what I was doing and we got to talking to discover he was a retired forklift repair tech. He was pointing things out on the controller and explaining what things did, and thought that this controller was designed to only output 60% of available power/voltage/whatever. Basically he said that once you demanded more with the "throttle", the controller then used those contactors in the foreground to expose the motor(s) directly to battery power. Even if this controller ended up being unusable or too bulky for a motorcycle application, it would still be worth tearing it out for all those nice thick pre-made cables and the contactors. Here is said controller. Notice the GE logos that might as well be screaming "you will never get any documentation about me, foo!"


I have actually been reading ben's electro-metro thread and considering how much it rains around here coupled with the fact that I am nearly always transporting something unwieldy like computer cases; I kind of want to do a little car instead of a bike. Are either of these motors up to the job of being over-volted enough to shove a little metro around? They're pretty damn heavy, weighing in at around 60lbs a piece. I don't know so much about this motor, which (ben, you were right) was the hydraulic pump motor in the forklift:


I would be more prone to nominate this guy for the job, if anyone:



Thoughts?

[bennelson]

That GE motor will be a lot easier to hook up because it has the driveshaft.

Either motor should run a motorcycle just fine. It's hard for me to tell the scale of the motors from the pictures. I think they would be a bit small for a car, but could work, as long as you are only looking for real basic transportation.

The motor on my Metro weighs a bit more than 60 lbs.
What's the diameters of the motors?

You might want to make a call to Advanced DC, they make some nice motors, including ones specially made for EVs. You might be able to get some more specs on the Advanced motor form them.

Hooking the "female" connection to a transmission takes more work though.

Forklifts are great to strip parts from. A forklift controller worked fine for starting the Forkenswift project. Same for Russ' Voltzilla.

YouTube - VoltZilla The Electric motorcycle "forkencycle" home built

[McTimson]

Did you get the motors from Gary's? I think I saw the GE one in the forklift a few weeks ago.

[Wonderboy]

Yeah, that's mine now Gary's is the sh!t.

[Wonderboy]

I've been thinking about how accident/injury prone I am, and although I haven't ruled it out, I've been veering away from the idea of using these parts for a motorcycle. I'm wondering if one of these motors could manage to push one of these around...like if I provided some overkill cooling for the motor. I'm also wondering how bad the transmission is in this vehicle, and if I actually need one - Is using the stock transmission very helpful? Or just a "hey why not, it's there isn't it?" kind of thing?

[bennelson]

The most important part of the transmission is the fact that it connects the motor to the wheels.

It's pretty tough to connect the motor to the wheels without one.

I don't see why some other transmission wouldn't work in there. I have always wanted to see someone convert a CRX to an EV.

[MetroMPG]

Wow - 150 for a light, first gen CRX? I would have seriously considered that for the ForkenSwift.

Did you compare your larger motor size & weight to Paul's? If I recall, he's using a pretty small one in his Beetle (and over-volting it).