Friday, March 4, 2011

Thursday, March 3, 2011

EV Friendly Businesses


I found that my parking lot was all parked up this morning - so I parked across the street where I'll be eating lunch anyway! Many Thanks to them!!!

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Successful test of Motor wired as Cumulative Compound Wound


Last night, I took 2 lengths of 4GA copper stranded wire and wired up the fork lift motor as a compound wound motor. By connecting S2 with F2 and connecting A2 with F1. I'm not sure if it would best be called a cumulative compound now, or a long shunt compound - but it gave a performance boost off the line in 2nd gear and pulled 400 amps almost right off the line. RPMs started dying out around 4 grand, though. SO, the hot setup would be to incorporate a contactor to open the Field windings after it grunts up to 2 or 3 grand - leaving the series windings to spin the motor to oblivion (6500+RPM is what the bearings are rated for). Nothing got hot, and there were no fires. :-) The battery pack was pretty discharged at the start of the test - I'll test again tonight with full charge. Next step is to advance the brush holder 10 degrees to cut down on arcing and maybe get some better prerformance off the line. This test makes the car feel like it has a lot more low and mid range - feels like installing a towing cam. :-) Very cool stuff....