Mercane Motor Heat

a significant issue in longevity of electrical motors is how hot they get, so I thought I'd start looking into thermal issues (why not? ... its a good excuse to go for a longer ride on the weekend ;-)

So this is a shot I took showing my thermal image, sorry, but try as I might I couldn't get the camera to focus on thermal imager (if I had three hands maybe...) but it was reading 35°C here after a long steep uphill run. Ambient air temperature was 23°C

you can see its warmer than the (about 7°C temps from overnight on the back of the water tank here) ambient, and that the hottest part was the part of the tyre which had been in contact with the road.

And the front

I'll try to get better shots this weekend.

However while I'll need to wait for summer, I feel that this indicates that I could push these motors to a bit higher voltage, because this sort of temperature isn't even significant.

(*you'll note its pretty dusty because its been on a few rough dirt roads)

I've done a slightly more lengthy follow up here after a much longer ride.