NitroRunner

Hey guys. I just started a new semester at school, and our project is to design and build an electric go kart. There are 3 groups and we are all building one, at the end of the semester we get to race them. There are some requirements as far as the chassis goes, but im not worried about that. I am looking for help with the electronics part. We are aloud to use no more than 4 car batteries, any kind of motor we want. I can get transport truck batteries but was wondering if the extra weight is worth the power? Do I need to start looking for a speed controller or can I just use some kind of a contact on/off switch? any tips or tricks are appreciated. The project is semester long and i will keep you posted with pictures as i make progress if this thread gets popular. Thanks

annie_himself

I think some kind of speed controller would be best. A switch won't be very safe.

DaveG55

Check into those electric scooters. They use some sort of control system that's thumb controled. I don't know what their current capacities are but it would really simlify your task if you could use off the shelf parts instead of trying to rig something up. Those scooters might also provide motors, batteries and other needed circutry too.
Good Luck

hands without shadows

You could rig up a 3 speed gas pedal using all the batteries for very little money. Speed one is the batteries wired as a 1s4p pack, speed two is the batteries wires as a 2s2p pack, and speed three is the batteries wired as a 4s1p pack. If you want reverse you could wire in a heavy duty DPDT switch and have three speeds backwards and three speeds forwards. Braking could be done with a simple disk brake setup.

Look around for deep cycle marine batteries, they can be discharged farther than regular batteries without harm. Regular car batteries are designed to pump out somewhere around 400 amps for a few seconds, you want around 40 amps for a few minutes.

Frozen72

Man I wish that I did stuff like that at my school...

nitrohog

The key here is to balance power output with efficiency. An electronic speed control will give you a lot more of both but it will be expensive. If it was me I would get 4 optima yellow tops for batteries and wire them in series. Good luck.

hands without shadows

Whoa, hold up a sec. Your in London? The only hands on enough schools to pay for this are Ross and Fanshawe. What school are you at?

NitroRunner

Well thanks for the ideas so far, keep them coming! and I go to West Elgin, which is actually in West Lorne and not London

calvino

OR, you can change out the power stuff (or make seperate boards that "gang em up") for more power, just remember to have some kindof cooling system with them, man, you are LUCKY

ziiaad

i found this website http://www.electricgocarts.com/ i hope this helps