Branson 8510 Rehab

    I recently bought an ultrasonic cleaner to clean parts on the kart while it is currently running with the gasoline engine.  I wanted a big one because I would like to be able to clean the CR125 case halves along with some other tools but the price is pretty crazy for these things.  I thought I would just get a smaller Harbor Freight unit to clean the carburetor and the brake parts but wasn't too impressed when I went to check it out in store, so the search continued.  Then I thought I would make one out of an electric stainless steel catering tray since it already has the heating element and is fairly large but adding the ultrasonics would have been costly and another electrical project I really don't need right now.
    Luckily I was able to talk to a guy at a medical cleaning house who had a big one that was broken and willing to sell on the cheap.  What I ended up with was a Branson 8510 that was pretty run down and dirty.  I went to work troubleshooting the unit and seeing what I could hopefully fix and what needed to be replaced.  I found that the timing switch and heating element were not fixable and that the ultrasonics did indeed work but some were loose.

Burnt up heating element

    I ordered a new heating element from Alpha Omega Ultrasonics and a new Diehl 600 series timing switch from ebay and went to work cleaning the torn down unit with some bleach.  Everything looked much better but the aesthetics were still not great which is just fine with me.  I set the unit up in my garage again to test without the heater and switch after I made some repairs to the ultrasonics and ran a test which turned out great.  The sample parts got very clean and the water even got somewhat hot from the cavitation.

  Afterwards I went to dump the water outside and slid the Branson along the floor to the garage door.  As I was bent over and twisting to move the heavy water filled cleaner I pulled my back out and had to stop the project for a few days.  Now I know why there is a drain on the side.

    Anyways, I am feeling better, got all the parts and continued making progess.

New heating element and ultrasonic transducers

    Everything works great and I got a $1700 parts cleaner (if it were new) for much much less.  Plus it doesn't use nasty chemicals to do the cleaning so that is good for both me and the environment.

Not the best looking piece ever but hey, it works great!

The Motor

I chose a three phase permanent magnet motor from Moog (G416-400) over a DC brushed for a couple of different reasons; mostly the challenge aspect of it all but it should prove to be a good choice.  I also made up a sturdy motor mount out of aluminum to mount the motor in the proper shifter kart placement.  Since it is roughly the same weight as a two stroke kart motor it should not adversely affect handling like some designs.  One note with using these types of motors is that the connectors are very expensive.  I thought about hardwiring to save weight and cost but having the factory disconnect is nice for motor swaps/upgrades.

The Kart

I chose an Energy Kinetic shifter kart chassis as a starting point because of it's great tuning adjustments as well as its awesome Ven05 4 wheel braking system.  Plus the name "Energy" doesn't hurt either and as I devlop the motor controller I can race with the gas engine on it.

The Goal

The main goal of this project is to build a proper and competive racing kart that is powered by electricity.  Besides the fact that my current two stoke motor is really terrible for the environment I believe the electric motor stands a fighting chance in SCCA solo competition.