Wouldn't it be great to have reasonable performance from an outboard and have the silence of an electric motor at the same time? Most of the motors currently available are designed for trolling and don't have the power to push a boat at higher speeds. The heart of the electric outboard is going to be the new Briggs & Stratton Etek DC permanent magnet motor

This thing is rated at a maximum of 15 horsepower and a continuous rating of 8 horsepower. All this power is in a package that only weighs 21 lbs. For technical info on this unit you can visit the Briggs & Stratton site by clicking here

 

This is a first prototype and I found an old Johnson 10 horsepower motor for a donor lower unit I pulled off the power head and installed the Etek motor. Here's the completed unit. A 1/2 inch aluminum adapter plate was fabricated to accept the top of the lower unit. Another 1/2 inch plate was made to fit the mount flange of the motor and a special coupling was machined to adapt the output shaft of the motor to the drive shaft of the lower unit. A lot of the former underwater exhaust was sawed off and the exposed areas was filled with epoxy putty. The rear portion of the cavitation plate has been removed and a prop off of an 18 horse motor has been fitted.

 

For initial testing the motor is being run on 12 volts. A swing arm is attached to the test tank and a spring scale is attached to the end of the swing arm. As different power configurations are tried and different props are tried, readings will be taken to try and arrive at an optimum combination.

 

ELectric DIABLO
The initial test runs on a boat look promising. For this first test, I scrounged up three 12 volt batteries of unknown quality connected them in series for 36 volts and used a solenoid to connect to the motor. The start up torque was incredible. You really have to be hanging on to the tiller when contact is made. In the pictures above, my Diablo is being used as the test bed. It's fifteen feet long and has a five foot beam. For additional info on the boat click here The hull weighs 245 pounds and as tested with batteries and driver the weight was probably about 650 pounds. An upstream and downstream pass was made while recording speed with a GPS. The 2 way average was 5.7 mph. Just a little bit more and it might have gone on plane.

This project is just in it's early stages. Eventually, I'll be installing this system on my Sneakeasy. I plan on running the system at 48 volts and controlling the the unit with a PWM controller. Revisions will be made as the component fairy brings me some more parts. As I progress, changes will be made to this page. If you have questions or comments you can email me click here
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