bicycle motor
bicycle motor
Bicycle 24V electric motor: how can one tell when the motor must be replaced? Same for the batteries?
I live on The Plains. This is my windy day bike. Bought the electric rig early 2006. Replaced the two sealed 12 volt lead acid batteries in the fall of 2007.
The rig doesn’t seem to have the “oomph” it used to.
When electric motors die do they wind down or is it a case of one day it works then it doesn’t?
And the batteries…how can you tell when they’re on their last legs?
When an electric motor fails, it’ll be either a mechanical problem ie.: lack of lubrication, worn bearings or it will be an overheating of the insulation. In both cases, the failure is likely to be quick and dramatic. You can usually have an electric motor rebuilt where they take it apart, replace the bearings and rewind with new wirings (it’s a machine that rewires it). With old mainframe computer tape drives, I would often have the air compressor rebuilt for $80 instead of paying the IBM price of $1,500 for a new motor.
Batteries are likely to fail in more complex manners. The voltage level gives you a rough idea of the state of the battery but this can be misleading especially when there’s no load. Lead acid batteries fail by sulfation of the plates reducing the surface area participating in the reactions. There are dangerous solutions such as reversing polarity on the battery to try and blow off the sulfates from the plates. Also a battery is only as good as it’s weakest cell so there’s the concept of an equalization charge to bring all cells up to full charge which unfortunately means overcharging all the other cells. Overcharging lead acid boils off hydrogen from the electrolyte requiring you to add distilled water. There are plenty of references on how to recharge lead acid batteries that include guidelines for what voltages and specific gravity measurements you should be seeing. It’s a pity that modern car batteries are all sealed no maintenance batteries, people used to have a greater appreciation of how batteries worked when they had to measure the specific gravity of the electrolyte and add more distilled water every week.
It may be that the replacement batteries are a newer technology where current density has been traded for charge capacity thereby resulting in a lower maximum current. That is AGM lead acid batteries have a lower maximum current than gel batteries which in turn is lower than wet cell. Also, you’ll see those lead acid batteries where each cell are round cylinders, instead of using big thick lead plates, they have thin lead foil layered with the absorptive glass matt and then rolled up giving plenty of surface area but restricting the conductance of the “plate”. The newest technology isn’t always the best technology, there’s always a tradeoff and both physics and chemistry hasn’t changed significantly since the big bang.
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