Saturday, August 23, 2008

Clockwise vs Counter Clockwise

After unpacking the motor I found a few things that EV America put in there for me. First was a document with a few warnings and guidelines. One that caught my eye was that motor can't be run in CW rotation unless ADC or a representative has modified the motor. The motor comes ready for CCW rotation which is good for most vehicles, except Honda as they run in CW rotation. I contacted EV America and they gave me a walk through on changing the motor.
In order to make the change rotation you need to release the springs on the brushes and then remove the four bolts holding the CEH in place. You can then rotate the CEH. The far left holes pictured here were for the original CCW, the next hole is for neutral whatever that means, and the bolts are currently in the CW location. These holes change the timing of the motor and determine which way it will want to pull. I had no idea it worked this and just figured you'd hook the polarity backwards to change the direction. Not the case here, it will rotate the same way regardless of polarity.



Second I added screen (window screen) to the brush protector to keep out all but the smallest of objects. This will help prevent damage from small rocks flying up into the motor. The screen was attached with a hot glue gun and then I used scissors and a utility knife to cut it to size.




Here is a picture of the motor assembled again. I manually rotated the motor by hand to make sure it was smooth. I put some small 6 gauge wire on for a quick 12 volt test to make sure the motor rotated the proper direction. I say small on the wire because I will be running 2/0 wire which will dwarf the 6 gauge wire. 6 gauge wire is actually quite large. For example this was the wire I used to pre wire for my hot tub. You can also see in this picture the chain I attached using the bolt holes on each end to lift it out of the container.

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