Has anyone had any experience with the powerpack motor? I am converting my recumbent tadpole style trike to an ebike using a lashout gear reduction drive a 26 inch wheel with a bolted sprocket. now I have everything, but the motor, controller, batteries, charger, throttle, wire, fuses etc.. I want to use a Kelly 100 amp peak 60 amp continuous at 48 volts. this is my first experiment with ebikes will the Powerpack motor take the 60 amps @48 volts without being smoked? is this motor robust enough to take this much juice. I am looking for a lot of torque and power and still being able to travel at 20+ mph. if this works my next project will be to put a body on this thing. Thanks for your help.
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That's a lot of power. 60 amps at 48v is 2880 watts, or about 2300 watts out after motor inefficiencies. If you are looking for that kind of power, you may consider a much larger motor.
The powerpack motor may not survive, and it'll probably get very hot and run inefficient at that amount of current.
What will be the weight of your setup? How fast do you really want to go?
20+ mph is probably easily doable on a bicycle with the powerpack motor running with its accompanying 35 amp controller at 48v. This setup will probably do very well on the hills. My 70 lb scooter at 20 amps and 36v with a chinese brushed motor will top at about 21 mph, and do pretty decent on hills. I can ride it at an average speed for a trip (total distance/total time) faster than riding a bicycle.
[url=/forum-topic/motorcycles-and-large-scooters/587-my-kz750-electric-motorcycle-project]KZ750 Motorcycle Conversion[/url]
[url=/forum-topic/motorcycles-and-large-scooters/588-fixing-my-chinese-scooter]900 watt scooter[/url]
Pic from http://www.electri
I second what Andrew says 2880 watts will overheat the motor if drawn continuosly though it should be fine for a short time so you might want to fit a thermostat in the motor and fuses on the phase wires. you might also want to look at forced air cooling. remember you can do 20mph on about 500 watts on the flat so 2880 watts should be lots of fun! Keep us updated on the kelly controller - There's not many people using them yet.
Kelly Controllers are programmable so it makes them a very versatile piece of equipment. That is the reason I want to use a Kelly instead of the controller they sell for the powerpack motor. I plan to start this project out @ 40 amps continuous @ 48 volts 1920 watts which should give me around 2.5 hp. I will post more info and photos as the project progresses.
Buzz
I would contact powerpack motors to see what they say about running it at 40 amps. Based on the dyno data from their site, it looks like it may not be very efficient at 40 amps. Maybe somewhere around 65%. Meaning, at 48v this would be more like 1248 watts out, or 1.67 hp.
[url=/forum-topic/motorcycles-and-large-scooters/587-my-kz750-electric-motorcycle-project]KZ750 Motorcycle Conversion[/url]
[url=/forum-topic/motorcycles-and-large-scooters/588-fixing-my-chinese-scooter]900 watt scooter[/url]
Pic from http://www.electri
I am learning something here I am glad I posted my question here. This is all new to me I have not even seen a ebike except on the web. no one rides them around here. In fact until I got my recumbent there were none of those here either, but now you see a them now and again. when I had my trike built 2 years ago I had intended to get a us pro drive for it. But the only one I could find on the web had the spoke clamp and I could just see me poping spokes off left and right with that. Now the Lashout system using a disk brake hub to mount the sprocket I liked. so I have been buying replacement parts for a Lashout and building my own system. I have built a few motorcycles in my youth so I am at home fabricating. My experience has just been in gas engines, but, now I feel the future is electric drive.
Tim told me he has run that motor with 55 amps. The hill climbing was noticeably better, but it will get hotter. He won't warranty it at that draw. I run mine at 35 amps stock, and it is still very powerful and efficient.
If you want to build an absolute monster, Tim found some of the larger motors he used to sell and a friend of mine got one. It will run at up to 100 amps at 48 volts! Its about twice the size of the powerpack motor. We haven't hooked it all up yet, but I expect we will need a serious battery to keep it happy.
I'll try to get a photo of it installed on a Lashout scooter.
Keep in mind that the motor will only draw maximum amps when you are starting out from a dead stop or geared too fast. If you have the gearing right, the motor will be fine.
I have the same motor on my Vego and I can hit well over 100 amps on takeoff. Climbing a 18% hill at 20mph, it draws around 50-60 amps, which it can handle for a minute or so.
I added forced-air cooling on mine so it can run at a higher power without overheating, but if you gear for 20-25 mph, you should be fine with a stock motor. At 25 mph on flat ground, it draws around 20 amps @ 48v.
After all the information i have received from this post I have decided to go with the powerpack motor running @48v @35 amps with the standard lashout gear reduction 19 tooth gear-reduction sprocket a 26 inch rear wheel with a 1.95 65 psi rear tire and a 54 tooth wheel sprocket I should be able to cruise at 20 mph at not more than 20 amps on the flat and only use the other 15 amps for the hills. This trike tends to get a little squirrelly above 25 mph with the 30 inch steering axle width. Also I want to start working on a Harley flh conversion, but that is for another forum. I will however keep everyone posted with the bike project as it progresses.
I have just finished fabricating the frame mount for the gear reduction unit. I had planed to weld it onto the trike frame, but I couldn't decide on a way to adjust the chain so I decided to fabricate a pair of cam-lock seat post type clamps so the unit could slide on the frame tube to get the proper chain tension then I fabricated another cam-lock on the top of the mount to help keep the gear reduction and motor aligned with the wheel sprocket. I will post pictures at a later date. that is all I have for now.
Keep it green