Tips for Keeping your EV Motor Dry

by Joe
(Ohio)

On the question of keeping the electric car's motor dry:

I built a 'pan' to completely cover the bottom of the engine compartment. This also apparently provides significant reduction in wind resistance. Gas cars can't do this because of all the heat produced by the gas engine. You will also need to be concerned about water coming in through the grille. In general you want baffles or splash shields which make the cooling air change directions before getting to your critical components. Air can easily do this while blown water will hit the first baffle and drain out.

Besides the motor, you also have to be concerned about water getting on the control terminals of your controller. The control terminals on most controllers are looking for a varying fairly high resistance signal from the throttle pot. Unfortunately what you get from water on the control pot terminals is a varying fairly high resistance ...

Curtis DC controllers will shut down if they don't see the throttle in the open position when the run enable signal comes on, so the typical failure mode when water gets on the control terminals is that the motor won't respond to the throttle. The one time this happened to me everything worked properly after things dried out.

Hi, Joe -
Thanks for sharing! That's great information.

Regards,
Lynne