Ventilation, Cooling and Lubrication

Do It Yourself (DIY)
1

Has anyone given any great consideration to Ventilation, Cooling systems and Lubrication?

In particular I am curious about;

  1. Ventilation of the battery compartments

  2. Cooling of the electric motor(s)

  3. Lubrication of the electric motor bearings.

#1 may not be much of an issue (if at all) for the Gel Cell or other such batteries but would certainly be a concern to those who run the conventional Lead -Acid batteries.

#2 & #3 my concern is for the long term health of the electric motors themselves… If we are to ever get our vehicles to be able to run any great distance or do any substantial amount of work (hilly terrain comes to mind) - The amount of heat produced could be substantial. Most of the motors I’ve seen are sealed bearing units. Some mfgrs call them “lifetime lubricated” - I am pretty cautious when I see/read things like that and would rather spend the extra time-dollars-effort to produce something that is serviceable…

Honestly - I’ve not ever built an EV before. I’m planning on a building a Serial Hybrid actually. However it’s not my first rodeo either as I’ve fabricated dozens of racecars and kit cars…

Thanks for any information you can contribute. Pictures are especially nice!

2

Am I the only one concerned about such things?

3

I haven’t quite got to this stage of planning on my project yet but from what I’ve read people using just take the air intake of the old ICE and pipe it near the motor and/or controller board to help get a little extra air in there. Some people are not doing anything special at all, the little air that flows from driving is enough. I guess it depends how hard you are pushing the system on average.

I’m fairly certain that most DC motors do not require any maintenance other than the brushes being changed. The bearings are sealed for both AC/DC (this might not be the case for 100% of the motors, but most). I’ve seen some AC motors that are water cooled and for this the original radiator is just kept and plumbed through the motor instead of the ICE.

Brian