Batteries installed

Dad has done a beautiful job of painting the engine mount and engine room to get rid of the old gasoline and oil smells and grime. It smells like a new home with a fresh coat of paint. Now we are ready to start mounting the batteries and electric motor.  It might not look like it in this picture but relatively speaking we've gained a fair bit of space with the removal of the old Atomic 4 gasoline engine and the fuel tank. Removal of both of these takes out about five hundred pounds. The batteries and new electric motor combined get us back to about the same weight. If we could afford Lithium batteries we'd be much lighter than the gasoline engine/fuel tank combo. In future no doubt Lithium batteries will be more affordable as the electric cars start deploying them around the world and large scale distribution and R&D kick in to develop this technology even further. For now we'll stick with the old lead acid AGM batteries.

The week before last Lorne and I spent the afternoon wedging the new Odyssey lead acid AGM deep cycle batteries into place on a custom platform Lorne has designed. Lorne has built and secured a base with edges to hold the batteries in approximately the same location as the old fuel tank. This will ensure that batteries are equally distributed in the centre of the boat and near where that same weight was for the old gas tank/Atomic four engine. The Odyssey PC1800-FT are a beautiful industrial, sealed battery system, designed to be rack mounted if need be. The positive and negative leads are on the front face of the batteries for easy connection in series (see earlier blog entry with diagrams of configuration) to get to 48 volts.

Although one person can lift and move these batteries, they are 130 pounds each, it is much easier and more reasonable with two people. So, Lorne and I got it down to quite a system of sliding the batteries through the side panels, lifting them in place from the top, and then inching them over the rails in the box designed to keep each battery in place. Each one fit like a glove. These batteries are sealed and are very sturdy. They can be placed in any orientation. In our case they sit as though ready for a rack. Once all the wiring is place Lorne will put a cap of plywood, like the base, on the top and secure with steel rods.

Next week, we do the electric motor installation and we should be ready to rock and roll with our electric motor system. It'll be interesting to see how far we can go on a full charge and at varying rates of speed. Next spring we'll switch the propellor to fixed blades (our current prop has retractable blades, good for racing, but not so useful for recharging our batteries). Things are looking good.

One other thing we did was to remove the red propellor shaft coupling device that was used for the Atomic 4. The red circular plate has been on the shaft for 40 year and so did not want to leave. Lorne said we needed a prop remover. So, off I went to the QCYC shed where Andy said we might find one. Sure enough, there it was in the back, behind some stuff. Incredibly the old fused connector finally gave way as Lorne and I used an extender and a bit of elbow grease to get the old thing moving. For the new connector we've found that the prop shaft is a slight bit smaller than the connector so we'll need a rubber filler band to fill the gap to make it secure. We are ready for the electric motor!

Stay tuned.