RC motor on a ride-on mower?

[wutang]

Hi guys,

I'm thinking about making a conversion of a ride-on lawnmower to electric, and I would like to use a RC outrunner (probably a C6374) - would you say it will be possible? Or should I rather go with a "big" motor?
The 6374 should be capable (according to the stats) of about 3kW, but I'm assuming that the lawnmower should be using less than 1kW usually (but that's just a guess; for example the GM Elec-Track had engines in the 1.5hp range as far as I know)

thanks,
Daniel

 

[wutang]

can the admin please move this to some more appropriate folder? I guess there's no answers because it's in the wrong one, I'm pretty sure there's lots of knowledgeable people and I'm not the first one who thought about this ... thanks

 

[Drunkskunk]

You are going to need a bigger motor. The 6374 is commonly used to replace a 30cc RC motor. That's a smaller motor than a weedwacker. Its really a ~1horsepower motor, and a riding lawnmower commonly needs 15-20 horsepower.

For an electric riding lawnmower you need not only the power, but a motor that can take the heat of running at full power with low airflow in dirty, hot conditions for long periods of time. So it needs to make around 15 horsepower nominal, not 15 horsepower peak. Golden motor makes a 10,000 watt motor. that works out to 13.3 horsepower. That might be close enough.

 

[wutang]

thanks man, will need to look for something bigger (though I'm still confused about the GM Elec-Track, how could they manage with a 1.5hp motor :?

 

[major]

thanks man, will need to look for something bigger (though I'm still confused about the GM Elec-Track, how could they manage with a 1.5hp motor :?

Compare continuous rated torque and motor cooling. Also, it was GE, not GM. And the 1.5hp motor was for propulsion only. Separate motors were used for the blades and accessories.

 

[wutang]

ok, sorry about the GM vs GE ... you're right about the mower motors (seems it had 3x 0.6 hp motors, if the wiki is correct) ... thanks for the feedback, I really overlooked that it had separate mower motors

 

[Drunkskunk]

Keep in mind, the Elek-trak used a massive motor that produced large amounts of torque, rather than horsepower. The drive motor was also fitted to a dedicated electric driveline built to be efficient when running on an electric motor, rather than trying to adapt to the inefficient drive systems of a conventional lawn tractor. Also, by comparison, the Elek-Trak barely moved compared to a gas lawn tractor.

Building a brand new riding mower optimized to use multiple high torque low RPM motors for the driveline and individual blades would be totaly different from trying to convert a gas tractor that used 1 central motor powering everything all at once.

Center of this pic shows the massive motor used for just the driveline on an Elek-tek.