How to make this power steering motor work?

[Sully]

Hi there,

I got a power steering motor from a scrapyard for mounting as a pypilot wheel drive, but I cannot make it work properly.

The motor is from a Suzuki Wagon. It basically consists on the electric motor itself and some kind of gear attached to it. It has two groups of wires:

1) The first group is directly connected to the electric motor (Big red wire (+), big black wire (-) and two smaller black wires which function I ignore).

2) The second group is wired to some kind of clutch??? That goes into the gear (see pictures).

I tried to power the + and - to 12v and the electric motor will work, but the movement won't transmit to the output. It feels like it is not engaged or something like that. Does anyone know how to make this work?

   
   
   
   

Thank you so much!!!!

Sully

[seandepagnier]

I really have no idea but a guess would be that the other two wires are either a clutch, or armature coil.

If you power just the two wires does the motor spin or not?

Did you try powering both sets of wires?

[Sully]

I really have no idea but a guess would be that the other two wires are either a clutch, or armature coil.

If you power just the two wires does the motor spin or not?

Did you try powering both sets of wires?

Thank you Sean, it was a clutch indeed. I powered both wires (no matter the polarity) and now it engages.

From this point: should I connect this cluch to the clutch output of the controller? Or should I power it independently?

Also I noted around 90 rpm when no loaded. Do you know the optimum wheel rpm output? So I can calculate the appropriate transmission ratio of the gear. I already 3D printed your wheel pulley design (t=124 if I remember correctly), so I'm now looking for the correct small pulley (I bought both t=20 and t=30 on AliExpress).

Thank you so much for making this possible.

[seandepagnier]

My midpower and high power motor controllers both have a clutch output. If you have the regular controller you might try using a switch and manually flip the switch.

Alternately, it is possible to install a mosfet and polyfuse on the controller (look for empty holes in the corner) to enable clutch.

The optimal is to rotate the boat rudder as fast as possible, however... you ideally dont want to slow the motor to less than 90% of unloaded speed or you lose efficiency. So essentially if you make it spin faster (lower gear ratio) you will get better steering and the ability to handle rougher weather, but lower efficiency. So for light weather you could use a higher ratio and save power somewhat, but if the ratio is too high (barely loads the motor) it would actually decrease efficiency...

It my be confusing, but the ratio is different if you want to optimize power consumption vs optimizing steering, and it depends on the conditions, but fortunately you shoudl be able to find a ratio that works pretty well most of the time.

So 90rpm would be 3 seconds to rotate the wheel once using 30 tooth? This should be a reasonable starting point, but I have no idea how many times your wheel rotates, and I dont know how much force it requires and...