Sunday, February 8, 2009

Motor Cooling

Today I finally installed the blower! I will post pictures tomorrow, but it seems to be working really well. I did a 3.7 mile test drive and it was my best run yet, in performance, motor temp, and estimated range. Not only did it yield the best results, it was also my worst EV-style driving yet! Most of it was hard acceleration, 40 MPH and then I did a hill that I have tried to avoid, but sometimes forget. My previous attempts at this hill started out with me putting the pedal to the floor, getting up to 30 MPH, and by the top I was down to 15 MPH. This time I stayed at the 25 MPH speed limit at the beginning, and held it all the way up. And I wasn't flooring it at all. I have done this run a couple of times, and each time the performance is awful and the motor is way to hot to touch. After this run, the motor was warm, but I could hold my hand to it and not get burned. This blower is just a temporary "patch" as it were until I get the FB1-4001A installed.

I did not get to do my 10 mile run because I got too involved with the blower. So hopefully this week I will take a decent joyride and see how the 10 miles goes. I am hoping for a 35 mile range, but my data is everywhere at the moment.

On the DIY Electric Car forums there is talk about LiFePO4 batteries for $0.35/Watt Hour or about $2900 for a 96 volt 90Ah pack, perfect for my EV. The LiFePO4 would weigh less than my deep cycle pack, and yield 2x the range.

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