Jozzer said:
Hi Battman,
Depends what your regen current and duty cycle are like, but if you mean 220A max forward current then you should have seen a lot longer lifespan than that.
...
There have been some differnet makes of brushes around over this last, when did you buy the motor/brushes? What vehicle, and how heavy was the use of regen?
Steve
Hi Steve,
Yes, 220A max forward current (until I started monitoring brush temperature at around 1000 miles and then upped max a little to 250A). About 32A regen current. I use regen quite heavily, hardly ever touch the rear brake now. The vehicle is a Kawsaki Ninja 250R and weighs 365 pounds.
It was the original set of brushes that were fitted to the motor that wore out in 1500 miles. I bought the motor in June 2009.
My current set look like they will wear out in about 1500 miles too. I bought those in February this year. For each set I made sure I advanced them by turning the brush holder in the
opposite direction to motor rotation. With the second set I verified that the alignment marks were indeed correct by following the section near the end of the workshop manual titled "Finding the correct brush holder adjustment". Brush holder doesn't seem loose, so no need to wrap tape round it.
I don't believe I'm overheating the brushes since I monitor brush temperature and stop the bike if they reach 80C (which only happens if I ride WOT in 45C Arizona heat). Agni recommend 90C max for the brushes, but I find that even after stopping the bike, the temperature
measured at the brushes continues to rise a bit as heat continues to leave the motor core. So 80C seemed like a reasonable maximum in my situation.
Unlike a lot of Agni powered motorcycles I have seen, I have the motor placed just behind the front wheel with full frontal assault of anything thrown off the wheel. So I don't know if that, combined with desert conditions is resulting in a lot of dust being ingested. I don't see any dust accumulating in the brush holder though other than lots of carbon (which I blow out every few hundred miles). Other than that, I'm kind of stumped why I'm getting worse wear than other folks.
Barron