waterproofing a motor?

[Jay64]

So I have seen small mention here and there about waterproofing an electric motor, but since we now have an E-boat forum, I think it would be cool to have people's ideas for this in one area. Anyone got any ideas/plans for doing this?

[Jeremy Harris]

I've put my motor, controller and reduction drive in a ready-made sealed alloy box, the type used for waterproof electrical stuff. It's sealed to IP66 (so OK for protection from water jets) and was a cheap and easy way to seal up an RC motor system. You can get these in some pretty big sizes and made of plastic instead of alloy. My LiFePO4 pack for the boat has 32 Headway cells fitted inside a big ABS sealed box. The only snag with putting a motor in a plastic box would be getting heat out; I'm using the alloy box as a heatsink.

I hired a yacht with a Lynch motor drive system a few years ago and that didn't seem to have any waterproofing - the motor was just fitted in the bilge like a standard inboard. AFAIK it's worked OK like this for a few years, so maybe these motors don't need anything fancy to keep them dry. There are several firms selling electric systems using Lynch or Perm motors and they don't seem to use any additional sealing, as far as I can see from their ads.

Jeremy

[Jay64]

Do you think an Agni would fall in this category as well? I'm kinda worried about rust build up.