# These motors were free but are they a good choice?



## generatorlabs (May 31, 2014)

********Update: These motors are now for sale. I am knee deep in a BMW i3 and Clipper Creek charger and I am very happy with them.
I do not have the time to continue my homebrew electric car so I have sold my homebrew controller to another forum member and I am looking for a happy home for these two motors. ********** 

I am looking to dabble a little with an EV to do basic commuting to work.
Thinking of modding a VW Jetta as I am familiar with working on them when they use ICE's.

This would be my first attempt at messing with an EV but I am pretty handy at building things. My last project was a large CNC mill and CNC Plasma cutting table. Those tools should allow me to make some nice mating plates, etc.

I have come across 2 FREE motors at my job. They come from sit-down Mitsubishi forklifts. They are AC drive and AC lift pump motors. They were pulled from different trucks but were pulled for the same reason. In both cases the truck went into a limp mode because it could not detect feedback from the internal RPM sensor. According to the Mitsu tech the motor encoders were not spared and at the time were not field replaceable because the AC systems were so new to them. New motors were installed and these were just sitting in the shop to be scrapped. I scooped them up and they are sitting in my garage. I swear the drive motor was so heavy that it made my Pathfinder sag a few inches when I put it in the back.

So my question is: Are these a good starting point? What about the RPM ratings and voltages on the spec tag? The voltage and RPM seem low compared to what I have seen on various other you tube videos. Are the encoders really not available? Anybody ever heard of this motor vendor? Will I ultimately need the encoder on my build and can I use another method to encode?

I do not know what controller was natively used with this motor. Could one of you propose a good candidate that I might be able to get for a good price on ebay? Trying to do this on a slim budget. I have the motors and a car. Just need a controller and batteries and misc contactors and hardware. I realize most of my money will be spent on batteries.

Thanks for any insight up front!

Here are some pics:


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## major (Apr 4, 2008)

We have this thread here: http://www.diyelectriccar.com/forums/showthread.php/using-forklift-motor-and-choosing-good-7598.html Mostly concerns DC forklift motors but some advice repeated often there applies to the pump motor. It will be difficult to couple to the internal spline shaft.

The traction motor looks interesting to me. It might be a sleeper awakened by higher voltage and frequency. A Curtis AC controller could go the route for you but you'd have to tune it to the motor and have that done by an expert.

The company on the nameplate, Advanced, is a later version, I think, of Advanced DC of Syracuse, NY. They used to make DC motors for EV conversions and for forklifts. Obviously this AC motor is made in China. I suspect it has a bearing encoder or pulse generator. SKF makes them, called sensor bearings. About $100, maybe more and should be available. Needs to be properly assembled, like by a motor rebuilder.


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## epyon (Mar 20, 2008)

Use the 108 v one that has 650 amps .


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## QuietCar (Jan 3, 2013)

Curtis does offer to optimize your motor for you if you buy one of their controllers. The kicker is the two way shipping to and from their site.

OR you can do it yourself from their instruction manual. It is not too hard to follow. I have done several. It does take some time and keeping good records is a must. 

If you use the 1238-7601 controller, you need a water cooled cold plate. Air cooling is not enough. 

Your large motor looks like a keeper. I would run it through a manual transmission though and keep the vehicle weight under 4,000#.

QC


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## generatorlabs (May 31, 2014)

>Major: That thread is useful but at over 100 pages it is a little overwhelming to go through. That thread should have been capped at some point because it is going in 100 different directions. There was still some good stuff in there.

>QuietCar: My motor is huge and even with most of the frame being aluminum this puppy would be a nightmare to ship because of its insane weight. Two people cannot comfortably lift this thing. If I do anything, it will have to be in-house. I wanna say this motor is going to be overkill for my application but I do like the fact that I will not be driving it beyond its capacities easily.

I have been looking at various homebrew and open source controllers. I am pretty handy with PIC chips and electronics but it seems like there is some serious math behind some of these PWM schemes which is outside of my realm of comprehension. Lets not even mention the amount of electrical noise a circuit like this generates and how easy a poorly designed circuit will trip up a pulse train, I/O, watchdog timers, etc. The Zilla controller looks like a good choice too. I have two or three Curtis DC controllers lying around my garage that I pulled from various equipment but I do not have any DC motors. I was thinking that I should put those up on ebay and then move to a Zilla platform or wait on some refining of the AC Tumanako project. Anybody have any experience (good or bad) with these projects?

I know so little about the AC motors I have now and I want to make sure if I do drop some bank on a controller it is going to work with satisfactory results


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## Ivansgarage (Sep 3, 2011)

generatorlabs

Where are you from? somebody might be able to help if we new your location.

Go to user control panel and fill in you location.

Ivan


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## generatorlabs (May 31, 2014)

I am located in Myrtle Beach, SC


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## generatorlabs (May 31, 2014)

I did some testing on the encoders that are inside the motor.
I took off the end bell off to visually inspect the encoder/bearing.
It is a SKF 6209 bearing. The encoder is a 4 wire encoder.
The SKF website shows basic pinout information for their bearings.
It is basically 5 VDC, GND and two pulse outputs.
I imagine there are two pulse outputs for directional quadrature encoding.
One of the pulse lines is working and the other is dead (this is why the motors were given to me). I just wanted to verify how bad the encoder was.

So here is my question. Do I need two pulse lines? Wouldn't a controller be interested in just rotational speed? In my eyes I would only need a second pulse line if I were interested in tracking motor direction.The pulses are 80 times per revolution. 

I am hoping I can get away with just one line because (a) that bearing is a little pricey (b) I would need a induction heater to get the bearing off and a new one on. Normally I would heat a bearing with a torch or oven but the encoder section of this bearing looks delicate. My other option would be to use an external encoder but that would require drilling and tapping the other end of the armature shaft and boring a hole into the end bell.


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## QuietCar (Jan 3, 2013)

A Curtis controller will shut down if one encoder channel (A or B) drops out.
They need both.

Can't speak for all the others.

QC


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## generatorlabs (May 31, 2014)

To those of you looking for large AC motors, I am selling the two motors shown above. They are monsters!

Serious offers only...low ball offers will not even get a response.

They are located in Myrtle Beach SC if you prefer local pickup otherwise because of the immense weight they must be palleted and shipped via truck carrier.

If you have been following my motor controller threads you will see that I had made significant progress with my homebrew motor controller but I decided to buy an BMW EV. The limited free time just was too much of a hinderance to complete a full car in a reasonable amount of time.

If the OP feels the need to move this thread I fully understand.

Thanks!


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## mizlplix (May 1, 2011)

LOL, I just priced one of those bearing/encoder units.....$300 USD.

Called three places, no one stocks them and most of the "counter jocky's"
Didn't even know what it was.......

If one of my common U.S. Digital encoders went out, the sensor is only $42 USD.

Decision: Stick to regular encoders. (They even come with the set up spacers and tools to do it correctly)

Miz


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## generatorlabs (May 31, 2014)

The encoders on one of these motors has a single bad channel. The other channel operates fine. You don't need more than one channel especially if you are building a homebrew controller. We are not worried about direction, only speed.

Since the armature shaft is visible on both ends I imagine an external encoder could be fitted if the end of the shaft was tapped or slotted. 

The internal encoder is a neat, clean option. I got the bearing information. It is made by SKF so it is made by a major manufacturer. I never replaced it because I saw no need to. I was going down the homebrew route as can be seen with my controller build videos. However if interfacing with commercial controllers like Curtis, then both channels might be sampled.


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