We run a couple of Elco electric outboards at work and over the past year have had all sorts of trouble with them. There's been a lot of shipping defective outboards and/or throttles back and forth for warrantee repairs. Our contact person at Elco is one of the more miserable human beings I've ever had to deal with, which doesn't exactly help the situation. This past Autumn we sent a throttle back and it's now been 8 months and still no throttle. No big deal for the Winter when everything was frozen up, but not really tenable now it's Spring and we need the boats for work.
So I did some poking around and it turns out these $450 throttles are three wire 5V hall effect throttles. The range is 0.5-4.5V where 2.5V is the middle of the neutral dead band. That's pretty darn close to the $10 thumb throttles (0.6-4.3ishV) I have lying around. I wired one up and it worked a charm. So I made a quick linkage to make it a little more natural to use. It's primarily made from laser-cut acetal with some odds and ends for fasteners. So far so good, but it hasn't been in use that long. It's partially covered but will definitely get wet in the rain. I'm curious to see how it holds up.
Video showing linkage -
[youtube]nqYgAr0Q67g[/youtube]
Throttle mounted and ready to go -
[youtube]iv0KcmxjK2M[/youtube]
So I did some poking around and it turns out these $450 throttles are three wire 5V hall effect throttles. The range is 0.5-4.5V where 2.5V is the middle of the neutral dead band. That's pretty darn close to the $10 thumb throttles (0.6-4.3ishV) I have lying around. I wired one up and it worked a charm. So I made a quick linkage to make it a little more natural to use. It's primarily made from laser-cut acetal with some odds and ends for fasteners. So far so good, but it hasn't been in use that long. It's partially covered but will definitely get wet in the rain. I'm curious to see how it holds up.
Video showing linkage -
[youtube]nqYgAr0Q67g[/youtube]
Throttle mounted and ready to go -
[youtube]iv0KcmxjK2M[/youtube]