I may be wrong but I think Russ Sciville managed to get one of the 2 (or more) of these Ford motors he bought to work very well with his Lotus Elise conversion (more info here... http://www.evalbum.com/1454 ) and possibly also with his later kit car project.... www.vortex- auto.com
He goes by the moniker 'rustybkts' on the web and I suspect he would be the man to ask about the practicality of using these motors. He does visit the list occasionally... MW On 4 Nov 2013, at 16:01, EVDL Administrator wrote: > On 4 Nov 2013 at 7:08, Zeke Yewdall wrote: > >> My question is, what use would a HPEVS motor be without the matching >> controller anyway? > > You're lucky they'll even sell it to you, warranty or no. Solectria would > sell motors and inverters only as a set. They said that every inverter was > "factory tuned" to its motor. > > AFAIK, this policy is, if not standard, pretty common with AC drives. > Metric Mind has the same policy for the MES-DEA and Brusa drives they offer. > On the inverter page, Victor states : "Programmed for and work together > with AC motors produced by respective manufacturers, therefore sold only as > matching pairs." > > A little historical tidbit here. Back in the early-mid 1990s, Ford briefly > offered a Ranger pickup custom conversion done by a third party. They > evidently had a stock of Ford-branded, Siemens-made spare motors - probably > more motors than Rangers. (AFAIK, these are not the same as the motors used > in the much more widely sold Ranger EV from later in the 1990s. Someone > please correct me if that's wrong.) > > About 20 years on, these spare motors are STILL being offered, usually at > absurdly high prices - I've seen them as high as $5k, and a couple grand is > common - by surplus dealers. You can see one listing here : > > http://www.commoditiesrecoverycorp.com/electricmotors.htm > > For years we had regular posts from newbies on this list, asking where they > could buy an inverter to drive this motor. The answer was, and is, "You > can't." No such critter exists today, and probably none was ever available > to hobbyists. > > My guess is that Ford scrapped whatever spare inverters they had for these > trucks. Or maybe some Ford buyer, unfamiliar with what kind of spares the > small fleet of vehicles needed, just went overboard with ordering motors. > (Is anybody here who worked on this project and knows the real story on > where all these orphaned motors came from?) > > I vaguely recall hearing that someone was trying to either build an inverter > for these or adapt an industrial controller to work with them, but I don't > know how that worked out. As far as I'm concerned, with no tested inverter > available for them, these are just very pricey doorstops. > > Anyway, to get to the point, I would say that HPEV's policy is actually > somewhat more hobbyist-friendly than the one in place with most EV drive > suppliers. > > David Roden - Akron, Ohio, USA > EVDL Administrator > > = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = > EVDL Information: http://www.evdl.org/help/ > = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = > Note: mail sent to "evpost" and "etpost" addresses will not > reach me. To send a private message, please obtain my > email address from the webpage http://www.evdl.org/help/ . > = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = > > > _______________________________________________ > UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub > http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org > For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA > (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA) > _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
