# Soliton Jr. Liquid Cooling Parts?



## PeterH (Mar 20, 2009)

Hi there,

Does anyone have a list of components and suppliers they used to pull together a suitable cooling system for a Soliton Jr.? If so, would you be willing to share it?

I've been searching Summit Racing and Speedway Motors and even ebay for bits and pieces and there are too many options to make selections with any degree of confidence.

I know evnetics recommeds a Laing D5 pump, but search for that and you get all sorts of versions... which one is the best choice...

Wish evnetics or EV vendor sold a kit of some sort... I'd gladly buy one just to eliminate one more 'issue' to deal with.

Thanks,
Peter H.


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## EVfun (Mar 14, 2010)

EVsource sells a couple of cooling kits. I did not use one of their kits to cool my Zilla as the cooling needs are very slight in a <1500 lb. EV. I have purchased other parts from EVsource and been happy with their service.


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## piotrsko (Dec 9, 2007)

another option would be to use a windshield washer set up out of a wrecked car through any sort of transmission cooler. I'm using this set up with the addition of a cheapo electronic fuel pump since the washer pump was frozen.

just go for the volumes and pressures Jeff recommends. If it isn't right the system will self protect and thermal limit.

Someone else is using a computer GAMER liquid cooling system.


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## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

PeterH said:


> Does anyone have a list of components and suppliers they used to pull together a suitable cooling system for a Soliton Jr.?


Said list would be (almost) infinitely long, unfortunately. There are, literally, hundreds of ways to skin this particular cat.



PeterH said:


> I know evnetics recommeds a Laing D5 pump, but search for that and you get all sorts of versions... which one is the best choice...


We suggest the Laing D5 as a possible pump, but it is by no means an exclusive recommendation. And of the many different versions of the Laing D5 pump we figure you can choose the best one yourself. Is variable speed important to you? Fine, choose that one. Fixed speed ok? Great, choose that one. Want to pay 4x more for the pump even though you are pumping 50-60C coolant? Ok, get the brass housing one. 



PeterH said:


> Wish evnetics or EV vendor sold a kit of some sort... I'd gladly buy one just to eliminate one more 'issue' to deal with.


Your sentiments are shared by many, Peter... We've kicked around the idea for a while but the many different ways of implementing liquid cooling combined with the many different ways of installing the controller sort of make this a thankless task.


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## Yukon_Shane (Jul 15, 2010)

Hey Peter, 

I was in a similiar place a few months ago but I found it pretty easy to put together a quality cooling system. The evsource cooling system kits mentioned above would work fine if your looking for a full kit but I'd suggest checking out the computer CPU cooling resources first. I was able to put together a much cheaper system then the evsource kit. I got most of my stuff from this site http://www.frozencpu.com/ 

essentially all you're looknig for is a pump, reservoir and radiator (and you may even get by without the radiator).

good luck

Shane


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## PeterH (Mar 20, 2009)

OK... understood. Thanks for the feedback everyone. I'll stay on this and when I have a working solution, I'll post the details here so at least that will be one possible solution that others could use as a starting point for their own needs.  

Peter H.


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## StanSimmons (Sep 3, 2011)

A Prius inverter water pump, OEM# G9020-47031, puts out 2 liters per minute and uses about 2A @ 12v. I'm not sure what pressure it runs. They show up on ebay regularly for US$80-90 (retail $120.27) and are nearly silent. It has the advantage of being designed for the automotive EV environment.

Tesseract: Would the Prius pump be a good candidate for the Sol/Sol Jr?


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## EVfun (Mar 14, 2010)

That is simply brilliant Stan. So obvious in retrospect, we now have OEM automotive motor controller coolant pumps available to us.


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## StanSimmons (Sep 3, 2011)

I can't take credit for the idea. I saw a segment of EVTV (Oct 22, 2010) where Simon Wilkenson in NZ sourced and tested it.


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## ngcontrols (Nov 4, 2009)

EVfun said:


> That is simply brilliant Stan. So obvious in retrospect, we now have OEM automotive motor controller coolant pumps available to us.


We were looking into this pump for our liquid cooling kits awhile back. Nice looking pump, as OEM as you can get! But the fact that it has 5/8" barbed fittings put us back to using the Laing D5 pump. We didn't want to have any extra reducer fittings in the cooling loop, for performance reasons (pressure drops with every reduction or increase in diameter - granted if you had 5/8" tubing throughout the entire cooling system, this would be a great feature. But getting up to 1/2" tubing size throughout the entire chillplate system in the WarP-Drive Industrial controller was a leap), aesthetics, cost, and simplicity. The Laing pump has been a pretty good pump in terms of cost, power draw, reliability, and performance. I would be doing cartwheels all day if I could find a $100 pump that 1) drew minimal power, 2) was suited for the automotive environment, 3) could move 2.5GPM with about 9ft of head, 4) was relatively quiet, 5) had 1/2" fittings, and 6) would keeping chugging along forever.

You can find all the components to piece together a decent cooling system. My experience is it's a pain to get it all coordinated and have parts that will last. For example, you will likely not find a PC liquid cooling pump that is potted (we have ours potted so they are better suited for the under-hood environment). That's why we put together these liquid cooling systems. Yes, the cost is higher than what you can piece it together yourself for. But there are plenty of aspects of an EV conversion to worry about. This just simplifies an already otherwise challenging project.

By the way, if you haven't already seen it, check out our latest addition - the mother of all liquid cooling systems!: http://www.ngcontrols.com/images/liquid_cooling/wdck2.jpg

Beefy bullet-proof easy-to-fill reservoir, gargantuan radiator with large tubing diameter throughout (for low pressure drop and consequently higher flow rate), AN fittings to never have leaks and give a professional appearance. Soon, we will have available for dealers adapter kits so either of our liquid cooling kits can be easily mated to any of our controllers, as well as Solitons and Zillas.


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## Qer (May 7, 2008)

Maybe a stupid question, but have you tried to just run the controller air cooled and see if that's sufficient for your needs?


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## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

Yeah, I'll second Qer on this one. We do encourage people to use liquid cooling on our controllers (if for no other reason than the Arrhenius equation)*, but it certainly can't hurt to try the controller without it. That is why we go to all that trouble to install fans on the things, after all. 

The Prius pump seems like overkill... you don't need 2gpm to keep a Sol Jr or a Soliton1, even, cool. A Soliton Shiva, maybe, but even it has so much heat capacity that you could, uh, say drive 15-20 miles at 95mph+ with no cooling whatsoever... Theoretically speaking, of course. 

Besides, it's hard to cram more than 1gpm (~4lpm) through the cooling ports on our controllers (and sorry they are so close on the Jr, but that's where they had to go to keep the IGBT cool).


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