Now that my car has been running for a while, I’ve been looking into ways to increase my range. It currently stands right around 15 miles.
I had been running my motor at 108V, 600 amps maximum. All things being equal, getting more power from voltage rather than amps should keep the motor cooler and also let it run at higher RPMs. This should result in higher efficiency (more electrical power converted into mechanical power).
When I had my arcing trouble, one thing I looked into was the brush advance. This motor, which is an FB1-4001, can have the brushes advanced for “clockwise” or “counter-clockwise” rotation. It can also be set to neutral. The neutral setting is for forklifts or vehicles that want to go equally fast forwards and backwards (and don’t use a reverse gear to do this).
I thought my brushes were advanced correctly, but I considered the problem again to make sure my old assumptions were correct. I put the car in first and lifted the car so that one wheel was just barely off the ground. My wife spun the wheel forward while I watched the commutator inside the motor. I marked the rotation direction on the motor case.
To advance the timing, the brush holder end of the case should be rotated as far as it can go opposite the direction that the commutator rotates. You can see here that there’s 2 exposed holes where the case could be mounted. So, my brushes are actually retarded.
One other thing that was confusing to me was the terminology. If you look at the brush holder end of the motor, my commutator rotates clockwise. However, the motor documentation calls this counter-clockwise rotation. The motor documentation considers that the drive shaft end of the motor is the clock face.
Here’s a picture of the holes and how they are marked in the motor documentation.
