How to convert a 48 volt forklift motor to 144v
 

Hello everyone.

I have read in various threads that in order to have speed I need to convert to 144v. I have tried to find info. If you know where I could find info on converting to 144v I would appreciate it.

Thanks
Bob the newbie

Try the ev forums. There are articles too.

DIY Electric Car Forums - Electric Vehicle Build and Conversion Community

Just don't leave us forever.

From talking an electric motor engineer a while back it sounded like a 48v motor work work at higher voltage as long as it's a series wound motor, it will run hotter so forced cooling will be needed and it will wear out the brushes faster so replacing them with brushes that are designed for the voltage you are running will be required unless you want to just stock up on brushes and replace them more often.
The nice thing about higher voltage is that the motor only sees that voltage when you push it, so it might see that voltage when accelerating and it will see it when you are going faster, but lets say you can get 35mph out of a 48v battery pack, your motor is going to be getting 48v while going 35mph, now if you have a 144v pack and are going 35mph your controller is limiting the voltage and feeding the motor the same 48 volts that it was being fed with the smaller pack.
The big advantage of course is that with a higher voltage pack that higher voltage is being fed in to the controller (a more expensive controller sometimes) using smaller wires/cables because watts is your amps times volts and your cable size is based off your amp draw.

Thank you for your reply going to read the article.

On the controller I will be using the open source controller