# Electric Tony Kart Conversion



## johnws6 (Jul 11, 2013)

Hi all, relatively new to this forum but not to EV's. Thought I'd share a project I'm starting on which is a conversion on a Tony cart to all electric power. I picked up the cart over the weekend as a roller without the gas engine. 

The plan is to use 24 Thundersky / Winston Lifepo4 60 ah cells in series powering a ES-15A-6 D&D motor through a Curtis 80 volt 350 amp controller. Already have the kart, batteries, and most of the small parts. Just waiting on the motor and controller to be delivered later this week.

I'm still considering other motor and controller options as I think I'm leaving some power on the table but I'm not looking to run into cost over runs either, so we'll see. 

Anyways here's some photos of the cart for now.


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## Karter2 (Nov 17, 2011)

You do realise that you will be putting ~200lb onto that kart..... before a driver even climbs on board ! 
Thats going to really test the handling ( karts rely on wheel lift to turn into a corner), and braking with only one rear brake.

PS:.. note spelling .."Kart"


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## johnws6 (Jul 11, 2013)

Karter2 said:


> You do realise that you will be putting ~200lb onto that kart..... before a driver even climbs on board !
> Thats going to really test the handling ( karts rely on wheel lift to turn into a corner), and braking with only one rear brake.
> 
> PS:.. note spelling .."Kart"


I do realize that it's a lot of weight to add. I only weigh around 150 lbs fully suited up however so that might help somewhat. 

I haven't 100% decided on the exact setup but figured this would be a good starting point. Just using the 24 lifepo4 cells is adding 120 pounds alone. 

I'm also adding the front brake conversion kit to the kart as I go through the frame to improve braking.


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## slimdawg (Mar 7, 2012)

Nice start , top speed?


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## winzeracer (Apr 3, 2012)

Nice looking chassis. I started out almost running a simmilar step with a ADC 7" and Alltrax 7245 with 40ah Lifepo4. Check out Thunderstruck they have a similar kart. I personally wanted more power and much less weight. Which is why I decided to go with PM motor and LiPo. I have 3.8kwh of LiPo that weighs in at 77lbs. However the batteries are the part of the build that has taken many revisions and countless hours testing. Lifepo4 will be much easier in that respect.

As far as the motor, have you considered a Motoenergy Brushless?

Also I have found that buying a rolling Shifter Kart chassis is often the best way to get front brakes. You may want to sell this chassis and start with a Shifter chassis with front brakes. I wish I had.

You may wnat to check out these guys kart, looks like a clean conversion, about the power level you are looking at but lighter. http://www.evcracing.com/


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## johnws6 (Jul 11, 2013)

I originally just wanted to make a kart that would just be fun to drive around, which gradually has turned into a full out race kart. 

I have been looking at the mars, pmg, ac , agni etc motors and went with the D&D since it seems to be the most robust of them all with a penalty in weight and size. The PMG132 is a nice motor it just doesn't seem to hold up to high currents for sustained amounts of time like I'm looking to do. I've seen quite a few of them having the solder joints melt out. 

The montoenergy motors look nice but the expense to run one seems pretty high with the price of the controlled added in. I picked up the D&D ES15-6 new for $300 plus $45 in shipping. I'll post more photos of everything in the next day or two.

The kart is a nice frame, but yes, I've already inquired about a few with front brakes as well and will probably end up selling this current frame. 

My main objective now is securing a good controller. I've had many curtis controllers but don't want to go that route again since the programmer or software is so expensive. So I'm leaning toward the alltrax spm controllers since the software is free direct from the company.

The Thundersky/Winston cells seemed pretty simple to hook together and manage with a BMS system. I've had them sitting the last 6 months and when I tested one cell yesterday, it's still showing to be fully charged. I used my e-station 902 hobby type charger and through the peak charge function it turned off within 10 seconds indicating a full charge. I was pretty surprised to see that.


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## winzeracer (Apr 3, 2012)

Ya hear ya, I started with the same idea, something "fun" then my idea of fun got warped, LOL.


I know you said you want to avoid curtis but I stumbled on a cheaper one. http://www.evtradinpost.com/item/1615

Looking forward to seeing how this works out for you. 

Good Luck and Happy Easter!

Brock


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## johnws6 (Jul 11, 2013)

After doing a bit more research, I'm leaning toward just picking up the Agni 95R motor. The D&D seems like it's a very good robust motor but is heavy and the Agni specs appear to be phenomenal at 72 volts. 93% efficiency and it looks like 91% efficiency even at 400 amps. I'm looking to find a good quality second hand / used one.


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## major (Apr 4, 2008)

Agni huh. Better buy a couple of extras


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## johnws6 (Jul 11, 2013)

major said:


> Agni huh. Better buy a couple of extras


Lol, that D&D is just so big and heavy compared to an Agni.


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## winzeracer (Apr 3, 2012)

johnws6 said:


> Lol, that D&D is just so big and heavy compared to an Agni.


Ya that is the same way I felt, however just be warned Major is right, I have nearly destroyed my motor with about 1 hour of run time. Of course it was way past spec, but they get burnt up often. The Emoto guys used to run agnis a lot, now not many motorcycles run them. Zero got rid of them and moved to BLDC. But as you have noticed for the weight they are impressive. Honestly if I had it to do over again I would go with a high end brushless like the EMRAX or something. 

The Agni will do fine as long as you keep in in spec and cool it properly.

Brock


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## winzeracer (Apr 3, 2012)

Cheap Agni 95 alert. Needs rebuilding and it's not a 95r but I thought of you.
http://pages.ebay.com/link/?nav=item.view&id=121341195786&alt=web


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## johnws6 (Jul 11, 2013)

winzeracer said:


> Cheap Agni 95 alert. Needs rebuilding and it's not a 95r but I thought of you.
> http://pages.ebay.com/link/?nav=item.view&id=121341195786&alt=web


Thanks for the heads up. I had checked it out earlier but it seems that repairing it would have been a headache.


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## winzeracer (Apr 3, 2012)

johnws6 said:


> Thanks for the heads up. I had checked it out earlier but it seems that repairing it would have been a headache.


I ended up picking it up. They are not that bad to rebuild. I have two I am rebuilding now, hoping that they will be a close rpm/volt match so I could pair them up do a dual agni moped or something stupid. haha. Any other progress on your build? Thoughts?


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## johnws6 (Jul 11, 2013)

winzeracer said:


> I ended up picking it up. They are not that bad to rebuild. I have two I am rebuilding now, hoping that they will be a close rpm/volt match so I could pair them up do a dual agni moped or something stupid. haha. Any other progress on your build? Thoughts?


Once I seen that it had sold, I had a feeling that you ended up buying it.  They seem like great motors, I haven't had one personally but it seems like if run in it's intended design limits it should outperform most others. 

The more I look into a motor/controller combination the more I'm looking into an AC15, AC30 type. I could also just crank up the voltage to around 144 volts and still be pretty reliable on the D&D motor. Limit the current to 450 amps and gear for a high top speed around 100 mph. 

I'll have to post more photos of what I've done with the kart so far, which isn't much but at least all the parts and the cad drawing thus far.


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## Karter2 (Nov 17, 2011)

johnws6 said:


> Limit the current to 450 amps and gear for a high top speed around 100 mph. .


 Gearing ratio is a key factor in kart set up for racing.
If you intend running on the usual "sprint" kart circuits ( as opposed to the "long" tracks usd by gearbox karts) .. then 100mph is a rare speed to reach,
Racers will always change the gearing ( axle sprocket) to suit the particular track configuration, surface conditions , weather etc.
for competition, its sometimes better to have low speed gearing to give better acceleration from tight corners.
Keep your gearing options flexible.


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## johnws6 (Jul 11, 2013)

After trying to find a cad file of the kart to mock up the components and not being successful I've decided to draw up the kart through google sketch up. For the most part this is pretty close, the bends get a little tricky to recreate.


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