Wheelchair motors ???

[pkirkll]

Since i have been messing with e-biking ideas and have been reading on the forum, and have built one hub motor bike,,,la-la-la...

It seems to be that i am looking intently at everything that has an electric motor attached to it ....

I seem to be looking at anything that may be able to propel me and a bike down the path now a days...

Just this mornning i noticed an old wheelchair in the back hallway that is not being used and will probably be scrapped...
4500rpm motor with a gear head.. Nice wheels and lots of beautiful connectors and wiring mounts!!!!
Yes, i am a scavenger!!!

It still turns on and works, but i think its owner cannot use it anymore.

Anyway, the question is are these gear headed motors in any way usable for e-biking?
I picked one model up (Invacare) that was going back to the factory foir repair and it felt like it weighed a ton...... i couldnt find the rpm or any data plate on it.

The other one on the w/c in the hall looks a tad bit smaller....I wonder with the gearing if it could be rigged for mid mount or something....left side maybe????

Oh i just had a thought, these may only be 12v motors...

 

[NeilP]

probably a brushed motor too

 

[pkirkll]

Probably so,,,though after i just wrote that they may not be allowed to be brushed becauseof the use of oxygen and spark issues...hmmmmmm...more reading!----------dang!

 

[Punx0r]

It will probably also have a worm-and-wheel gearbox, meaning it cannot be back driven. So you'd need a clutch if you wanted to move the bike without the motor spinning.

 

[salty9]

Should be suitable for powering a barrow or garden cart. I'm planning on one.

 

[Jeremy Harris]

AW has played around with wheelchair motors, I think. IIRC, most have an electronic/magnetic brake that engages as soon as the power is turned off, to lock the wheels, as a safety feature. Some of the newer ones use brushless motors, but most of the older ones use brushed motors. They are built like a brick outhouse though, so probably have scope for tweaking. The main problem is that they are geared right down to a very low speed, which makes using them on a bike a bit difficult. It might well be possible to adapt one as a BB drive, though, provided it's narrow enough.

 

[amberwolf]

Yes, if you look at my CrazyBike2 thread in my signature, you can see in the first pages about it's original powerchair motor setups. You can read more about them and how I worked out the drive at the old blog,
http://electricle.blogspot.com

MattsAwesomeStuff here on ES is presently buildng a bike around a similar motor and gearbox, IIRC.

There's at least a couple of other powerchair/wheelchair motor projects around here on ES, but I dont' ahvea ny links ATM.

http://packratworkshop.com has some trike projects where he tried out various powerchair motor stuff, but they werent' satisfactory for his uses--the plans for hte trieks are still there, though, and the build logs and info.

There are also brushless powerchair motors, like this one:
http://www.endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=32838
These have more hope of being powered at higher voltages and power levels without overheating, vs the regular brushed gearbox type. (which get pretty hot when overvolted and overwatted).

Efven the brushed motrsa re very good motors, durable, reliable, and hard to kill. You'll see some pretty bad abuse on my blog with various system failures, but I never killed a motor or gearbox int eh process, even the time I had one smoking.


But they are all very heavy and bulky, partly because they *are* built so reliably; but also because there is little incentive to use light motors on these chairs--most o f them use the motors and batteries as ballast to holdt eh chair level on slopes and when the occupant is getting on/off, or reaching out for objects and such. There are better ways to deal with that, but theyr'e more complicated and not as cheap.


Most of them are 24V motors. The controllers are not usually usable for our purposes, so you need a separate brushed controller. I used a 2QD from
http://4qd.co.uk
after I again blew up the heavily-modified scootngo controller I'd repaired over and over in my experiments. Later I changed toa Curtis golf cart controller that JEB here on ES donated to me (though IIRC I wasn't on ES yet, it was thru my electricle blog).

I've run them at 36V for quite a while with no issue, and 48V for a short while before the torque of the system destroyed my chainrings and chain yet again, after yet another chain misalignment/derailing. (that particular oroblem is actually why I am presently using hubmotors, as I liked the powerchair motor system thru my bike's gear-shiftable chaindrive).


I remvoed the electric brakes, as I ddint' want them. On some of the gearboxes there are manual clutches, but osme dont' have one and you have to apply power all the time that you want to move them. Usually the lower power motors on more wheelchair-like powerchairs wil have clutches, so the personal assistant can wheel the chair around for someone, after releasing the clutches. The higher power ones and the ones that dont' resemble wheelchairs tend to have no clutch, but some still do.

I have two working powerchairs here. One is a Pride 3-wheeler, meant more for travel outside the house, and IIRC it doesn't have a clutch, but also has a transaxle gearbox for differential, and only one motor. The other is a more compact six wheeler, two big wheels with a motor each, and clutches on each motor, and four caster wheels on the corners. It is meant for in-home use. Both are 24V and use big SLAs for power (about half the size of a car battery, each). I used batteries and motors just like the ones on the smaller 6wheeler for CrazyBike2's first powerchair drive.

Most of these have around 100-140RPM output from the gearbox, which makes them easily useful for driving the primary chaindrive ofa bike, with just a slight geardown to the pedals. Massive torque, though, so align stuff well first. :lol:

Most fo the large SB50 andersons on my bikes came from powerchair stuff (the rrest from server-size UPS stuff). Wiring and whatnot is useful too.


Unless your'e in for a fair bit of DIY, mechanically and electrically, powerchair mtoros are not really the way to go.

But if you're up to the DIY, they are a cheap (and releatively plentiful) source of power for small EVs and ebikes.