# How to get the most out of a Warp9 or M102 motor?



## Vanquizor (Nov 17, 2009)

Quick and dirty is the factory rates the warp 9 at 450A for 5 min and 190V. that means 85500 watts, 73500 making it to the pavement or just a little shy of 100hp and I would consider it 100% safe and reliable.

As to whats possible I consider that a timely question given that I'm currently working on a project that is trying to design something track worthy with dc motors. I think when you start talking about a laps and reliability instead of a 10 second blast it becomes more a question of how effectively can you cool the thing.

Learning from the drag guys who are pushing these motors and considering input power vs results its my opinion that in the range of 1000-1500amps input and a 170-200v limit somewhere between a quarter to a third of the input power goes to heat. This means to run a track vehicle putting 200hp to the wheels continuously we need to get rid of around 50,000watts of heat.

The good news is real race vehicles don't run at peak power continuously, we don't have infinite battery power and the motor will survive while holding a surprising amount of heat energy. What this means is your operating window is defined by the heat capacity of the motor, the profile of your actual power demands, and how effectively you can get heat out of the motor. 

My best analogy would be to think of the motor as a bucket, the power you are putting through it as a garden hose filling it, and your cooling systems as holes letting water out... if the bucket reaches the top your motor is scrap.

If we are talking stock motors my conservative guess based on net gains ratings are the motor can take ~500watt hours of heat and with stock fan at reasonable rpm sheds 4000watts continuous. Napkin math says that means you can do 200hp for ~39 seconds on a stone cold stock motor, or less if you load it a bit getting to wherever your going to bag on it. Anything you can do to improve cooling increases this performance envelope.

Bear in mind these figures are theoretical and purely my best guess- I am not sure there is anyone on the planet that has actually done this kind of analysis in the real world and probably only a handful that have pieces of the data necessary to enable this kind of analysis... but I would sure be happy to be proven wrong.

How I am going about analyzing our performance requirements is I am using 2 throttle traces from a competition vehicle with lower and higher performance to what we are targeting and using that to determine what duty cycle our motor will actually see. It is an interesting problem because the less power you make the more time you spend on the throttle creating heat (95% duty cycle for the 60Hp vehicle and 65% duty cycle for the 180HP vehicle) meaning that even a small increase in cooling capacity can allow much higher performance.

You'll notice I didn't mention RPM once in the analysis above- fortunately horsepower is horsepower so making 200hp at 6000rpm through a 5.0 rear end is the same as making 200hp at 3000rpm through a 2.5 rear end. With a warp9 motor you are more likely to see peak power in the 3000RPM range so you would need to re-gear your machine appropriately. 


One last point though- if you want to build an electric drift machine chassis is far more important than power output. An Ae86 requires a lot less power to drift than a 350Z. Also torque is really all that maters, if you have enough torque to break traction it takes a surprisingly small amount of actual power to keep the tires spinning- more so if there is little weight on them or you have less tread width, or you have chosen a compound with lower grip. If you are converting an existing machine log your TPS during a run and you will find how much power you are actually using which will translate to how much heat you are actually putting into the electric motor.


----------



## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

Matej said:


> Sorry if this is a dumb question, but what is the maximum power and rpm that can be reliably attained from a Warp9 or an M102 motor?


Not a dumb question at all. No idea with the M102. John Metric has the Helwig brush holders in his Warp9 motors and with the proper brushes. I believe he has run 2000 amps at a peak of 210 volts into a motor. This peak occurs for just a couple of seconds during his under 10 second runs. Each motor briefly sees 420kw. I believe Vanquizor is correct in his analysis. At 2000 amps each motor is probably doing a little over 500 ft-lb of torque. It would not be unreasonable to see 30% of this input power converted to heat. The controller losses at 2000 amps would be expected to be in the range of 3800 watts. Motor losses of 126 kw peak would not surprise me.



Matej said:


> I know some of the ridiculous power cars run two of them in series, making 700-1000hp. How is this done? Is it all in the batteries and forcing big voltage through the motors?


Each motor has its own controller. Each motor runs 2000 amps at 210 volts so they are in parallel. Peak input power of 840kw (1126 hp) The controllers ramp the voltage up to limit the current into the motor to 2000 amps (each). The battery voltage is constant and at the battery you would see the current ramp up until the transmission shifts up and then it would drop some and start to ramp up again. Motor sees 2000 amps the whole time but the voltage ramps up. Hope that makes sense.




Matej said:


> For example, if I could achieve 200hp and 6000rpm with a single Warp9 motor for a lap drifting around a track, I would be happy.


With a stock WarP 9 motor at 1000 amps and 149.2 volts you are feeding the motor 200 HP. If you follow the guidelines you would do a peak of 172 volts without risking flashover. The voltage is important because the higher you can go the higher you move the peak of the torque band. I dont have good numbers but my guess is that at 1000 amp and 172 volts you would see the HP peak out at around 5000 RPM. Power would drop off at RPM's above that because the motor current would start to drop off above that. If you increase the torque by increasing the current you will move the peak power point to a lower RPM. Isn't the official RPM limit 5500 RPM? I never get there in my car because at 1000 amps and my low voltage but overly saggy batteries I don't have any torque at levels above the mid 3000s. So you have to shift for it to keep pulling.



Matej said:


> Obviously, if I could get 250-300hp and spin it to 9000rpm, I would be even happier.


Not with a WarP 9. I think George Hamstra told me they spin the armatures to 8000 RPM in test. I limit the RPM to 6000 on mine but almost have never hit the rev limiter. 



Matej said:


> The reason I am not posting torque numbers is because I do not doubt that an electric motor would have no trouble making sufficient torque.


I have a dyno plot that shows 277 ft-lbs at the motor but measured at the wheels. It rolls off because my motor controller was not water cooled and it overheated after just a few seconds and cut back current. This was at 1000 amps. And yes, it is now water cooled.



Matej said:


> However, what would be necessary to do this? Is it even possible without a serious internal overhaul of the motor or some such procedure?


I doubt that you could sustain 200HP for very long with a WarP9 You need to be able to get rid of the waste heat. Blowing cold gas through the motor and on the case would help for a while but the heat is going to difficult to remove and brushes might have to be designed to handle the different severe conditions. I suspect that you could get a lot closer if you used a Tesla drive train. It may also ultimately have heat problems as well even though it is water cooled.

Best Wishes!


----------



## Matej (Dec 4, 2015)

Fantastic information, and a lot to consider and learn. Thank you both very much.

I plan to put together this first setup as a more of a learning experience rather than expect too much of it. Then I thought I could eventually add another motor or upgrade to something more powerful.
However, it sounds like while the single motor may not exactly be a powerhouse, it should still be possible to have some fun with it.

Looking forward to learning more on this forum.


----------

