Electrathon America Forum

stevgri · Member

Best motor on the market?

Archer321 · Senior Member

This should be interesting...

Zaine Stapleton · Senior Member

The majority of motors in use in the Northwest are Briggs & Stratton Etek motors. The exception would be Cloud racing with the L.M.C. motors.

There are a few teams using Manta motors (same as Etek), and one or two using old Scott motors or the PERM motors.

The teams using the PERM motors ususally don't have very well built halding cars. So to say those motors are not good wouldn't be fair.

As a fact, the Scott motors everyone was using at one time. The biggest issue was them overheating and getting destroyed no matter what steps were taken to keep them cooled off.

I'd be interested in trying a L.M.C. or PERM (perferably the L.M.C. type) motor to see what difference it makes, but it's not like I have a spare $4000 sitting around either to experiment.

Zaine

-- Edited by Zaine Stapleton on Monday 14th of November 2016 11:13:20 PM

Archer321 · Senior Member

And I think that may be the limiting factor to this conversation. How many people have sufficient experience with multiple motors to actually have a valid opinion on this?

Nitoragro · Senior Member

I have used 4 motors, the Etek, ME0909, ME0709, and a Phoenix racing hub motor. From my experience the etek is the best for me. However it is very hard to find but the ME0708 is close and used a lot here in Tampa. The ME0909 i just got and it has been running ok, it is not as quick in acceleration as the etek but still an efficent and powerful motor. My opinion on the ME0709 is not very accurate since it is an old motor i have used however it does run lower RPMs than most but it is very powerful at the expense of being slightly less efficent. The wild card is the hub motor. 3 cars use them in Tampa, one of my teams on lead acid on 48v, and 2 lithium cars on 60v. They are efficent however "gearing" is non existent. Also if using a hub motor on a normal 24v system you need a very large wheel so hub motors need to be used on at least a 36v system. If i were you, and ive been in your spot before, look at your top 2/3 motors and compare their performance curves, what would be the best for your price. I hope this helps, best of luck to you

ProEV · Senior Member

What is the 'best' motor?

In electric racing, we are always limited by energy so my primary criteria would be efficiency. The motor takes stored energy and turns it into mechanical energy. The greater the percentage of the stored energy that gets turned into mechanical energy, the faster we go.

Motor weight needs to be include in the efficiency calculation. This is fairly simple in Electrathon racing if you have a solid calculation for average efficiency under race conditions (not peak efficiency). For example, I have a 95% efficient motor that weighs 25 lbs and a 90% efficient motor that weighs 5 lbs. I have 1,000 Watts hours of stored energy for the 1 hour race. My vehicle weighs 500 lbs without motor. So I have the choice of 950 mechanical Watt hours driving a 525 lbs car or 900 mechanical Watt hours driving a 505 lbs car. 1.81 Watt hours per pound vs. 1.78 Watt hours per pound. Everything else being equal, more mechanical Watt hours per pound will be faster.

My secondary criteria would be flexibility. We are racing, not performing a lab experiment which means conditions will often less than ideal. Motor efficiency is determined by both RPM and current, so I look for a motor that has a broad enough RPM range of reasonable efficiency, rather than the perfect peak. I also want the motor to be efficient both at around 800-1,000 Watts power level that we average and 3,000-4,000 Watts that I might need to pass or accelerate from a slow corner.

It is hard to seperate what I need from a motor without including the capabilities of the controller. I would not use a motor that does not do regenerative braking. The ability to slow the car without discarding the energy is critical for getting through traffic quickly and effectively. I find a 'soft' minimum voltage capability very useful. By this I mean that the controller keeps the voltage above the set point by limiting current. This protects the batteries from the driver's desperate urge to go a little further. I also rather a controller that gives me information on current, voltage and RPM in a form I can use.

Many teams buy what the other teams are using. There are advantages in familiarity but there have been huge advances in what is available in small EV motors. The motor we are running cost $700 http://www.astroflight.com/3220 and our state of the art controller cost $375 http://www.ebikes.ca/shop/electric-bicycle-parts/controllers/c-bac2000.html which is cheaper than either of the motors alone mentioned in the first post.

We won the first race last weekend and was running with the leaders in the second race when we had an off track excursion and threw the chain. The two cars in front were running Hub motors which is another option teams should consider seriously.

It does take research and effort to find and configure new equipment but the Internet is an amazing resource. Here is a link to a thread where I looked for our new motor: https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=81821

dmorgan · Member

Like the guy at the speed shop told 16 yr old me " Speed costs, how fast you wanna go?"

Lutzedarknut · Member

We own both the PMG-132 and LEM200-D135 motors. Both were tested with a peak efficiency of 88% at about 21.5 volts and 40 amps. The PERM motor, however, was purchased in the '90s, back before the company was sold (at least this is what I was told). Nowadays the motor could be different and simply not be as good, or we just got lucky with a great motor.

The lynch motor had to be broken in extensively to get good performance. The first test on the dyno yielded an efficiency of about 73%, I believe. After running it for tens of hours and messing with the timings, we got it up to the 88%. I would say the lynch motor is the best motor right now, especially because of the price difference. $2.5k is simply not what the PERM motor is worth by any stretch of the imagination.

Another few quick things to note:
The lynch motor has a much lower rpm than the PERM at each voltage. If I remember right, the PERM would be around 1100, while the lynch would be about 900 rpm at the same voltage. Not a big deal by any means, but you might have to change all of your gear ratios around. You also can't change the timing on the PERM motor. It is stuck at neutral, while the lynch can be advanced or retarded. You'll just have to play around with the timings to get it just right. We talked directly to lynch about the poor efficiency when we first tested it. It seemed that it became most efficient at either the most advanced or most retarded (I cant remember off the top of my head which it was) and we considered milling out the notch to allow it to go further. In the end we decided not to do it, but it's something to consider. Basically you just have to break in the motor a ton to get the performance it can achieve.