Speaker A
In the last episode, we finished the Tesla-powered mini jetboat, but I immediately blew it up on the river.
Fixing and testing a Tesla-powered mini jetboat at 50% power, troubleshooting electrical failures, and exploring performance tuning.
Ask about this video. Answers come from its transcript only — with the timestamp, so you can check them.
Generated from the transcript and can be wrong — check the timestamp.
Key Takeaways
- Electric motors can generate damaging power if spun without load or power applied, posing risks to EV components.
- Careful tuning and gradual power increases are necessary to avoid costly failures in experimental electric vehicles.
- The Tesla-powered jetboat shows strong potential with half power, with room for performance gains after resolving cavitation.
- Remote inverter tuning via Wi-Fi enables detailed motor parameter adjustments without onboard laptops.
- Safety features like RPM monitoring are critical to prevent accidental damage in high-power EV projects.
What the video covers
- The video continues from a previous episode where the Tesla-powered mini jetboat was completed but immediately damaged.
- The team inspects and replaces damaged components including the inverter, control board, and charger.
- They discuss the risks of electric motors acting as generators when spun without power, which caused the damage.
- Temporary 12-volt power is supplied by car batteries to run essential systems like pumps and fans.
- The boat is tested on the water at half power, showing promising speed and handling improvements.
- The creator explains cavitation issues affecting performance and plans hull modifications to fix it.
- They showcase the inverter’s Wi-Fi tuning capabilities and discuss motor parameters for future optimization.
- Battery life is strong, allowing for extended driving sessions without frequent recharging.
- The video includes a sponsor message from Delete Me about protecting personal data online.
- Plans for future improvements include adding safety features to prevent accidental damage and increasing power output.
Chapters
- 00:00Recap and Damage Inspection
- 01:02Replacing the Inverter and Charger
- 01:51Boat Ready for Testing
- 03:11Explanation of Motor Damage Cause
- 06:07Sponsor Message: Delete Me
- 07:24On-Water Testing and Performance
- 09:28Cavitation Problem and Hull Work
- 10:04Inverter Wi-Fi Tuning Demo
- 12:27Final Thoughts and Future Plans
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
So, today we're going to fix it and take it to downtown Nashville. My camera guy went and got a new motor for us today. Drove all day.
Speaker A
Okay. No signs of damage or water. Okay. I think we're good, dude. Well, let's check our damage here.
Speaker A
Oh, yeah. This chip right here. There's our junk board. Look at this chip right here. See all the discoloration where all the letters used to be? It's all burned up right there.
Speaker A
That's a bummer. The bigger bummer is that the inverter is likely also fried. And I wouldn't want to put a new board in here because this is 600 bucks. If I put a new board in here, it would probably fry
Speaker A
this again. So, it's not worth testing this at all, really. Here's our new inverter setup. The control board is black, but it's the same exact board that we had in the first one.
Speaker A
Okay, the new inverter is all installed.
Speaker A
We have another giant issue. The charger also blew up when the inverter decided to go. We absolutely need 12-volt power from the charger to run the boat. We need the water pumps, the fans, the contactors. Everything needs 12 volts.
Speaker A
So, for today, I'm going to stick some car batteries in here and we're going to be able to drive the boat. These EV projects don't have room for error at all. It's either extremely expensive or you, like, you die. So,
Speaker A
We are so back, baby. Let's go. Hat rescue. All right, we got it. Heck yeah. Yeah, that's a good sign that the boat is fast enough now where the hats have to be bolted down.
Speaker A
Brought duct tape this time, I see. Yeah, a little better. Like I said before, our seal hasn't come in yet.
Speaker A
Our or to Nashville Heat. Heat. We got to adjust our trim tabs down just a smidge. It still hops a little. The motor is not turned on right now, right?
Speaker A
We're all good. It's not spinning. Let me explain what happened. I did some research. Electric motors are generators also. They do the same thing when power is not applied. If you spin them, they produce power. I turned the
Speaker A
motor off while it was still spinning just a little bit and it blew everything up. It ruined the charger, the inverter, the inverter control board, maybe a couple other things. This is actually a huge problem with all electric vehicles.
Speaker A
If you've ever seen them tow a Tesla, they drag it up the rollback. The tires aren't spinning at all. It just drags them up. It has to be that way because the tires are directly locked to the
Speaker A
motor. If you were able to spin the tires while the motor wasn't turned on, it would ruin the entire car. Exactly like what I did to the boat yesterday or three days ago. How that works specifically is it disconnects the batteries from the
Speaker A
motor completely. And if a generator isn't connected to a battery, where does all that power go? I've never pushed a button and it immediately cost $6,000 before.
Speaker A
That was not cool. I feel like you shouldn't have done that, bro. In the future, we're going to put a watchdog, whether it's a computer or some other thing that monitors the RPM of the motor, and if it's anything but
Speaker A
zero, it won't let you open the contactors. We will still have the emergency kill, which is the pyrofuse, but we don't want to be able to just accidentally boop and blow up everything on the boat. That's a huge bummer.
Speaker A
This thing is looking so good on the water and I'm really happy with how it's working so far. And this is still just early testing. We're at like half the amount of power this thing can put out.
Speaker A
I'm just as excited as you are to turn this thing up to 100% and do an official top speed test. But we have to be patient and do a little bit more testing before so we don't blow it up again.
Speaker A
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Speaker A
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Speaker A
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Speaker A
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Speaker A
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Speaker A
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Speaker A
Look at that. That's not bad. Yeah. Give us a good push off. Don't fall in.
Speaker A
You got mud on.
Speaker A
All right. Hop in. No, dude. I actually almost lost it.
Speaker A
There's handles everywhere. How did you lose it? I know. I'll just do everything then.
Speaker A
Look at me. I'll record. And I'm wearing my shoes in here, by the way.
Speaker A
No, no, no. Let's go. Oh, the city looks so good at night, too. They're jealous. I can tell they wish they could go slower than what they could. Now, look, we still have 90% battery.
Speaker A
I was worried this thing was going to be like a 5-minute show and then you'd have to charge it. I really feel like you could drive for a few hours.
Speaker A
Check out the batteries. Let's go. I have to do some work to the hull, too.
Speaker A
We have a huge cavitation problem, which is when the impeller sucks in air instead of water. Because the way this kit was designed, you're supposed to run a skid plate because they like jump these across land and stuff. The water is like
Speaker A
skipping below the intake and it's causing a bunch of air bubbles. That's what that noise is. So, we have to get rid of that. We're going to pick up so much performance when we get rid of the cavitation. The best part about this
Speaker A
boat is there are a ton of different parameters and new things we can try to get a lot more performance out of it. We are at 40% of the RPM that this motor can go to. The typical gas motor can
Speaker A
only spin like 12,000. That's like a built motor. So, the jet pumps are all designed for that. I don't know what's going to happen. Nobody knows what's going to happen when you spin 120,000 RPM. It could work really good. We have
Speaker A
no idea. This is just like the base tune for this motor and it already rips. We have so many parameters to tune in the inverter to get the best performance out of it. And from there, we can crank up
Speaker A
the power and the RPM. I think our top speed could be like 60s, 70s maybe.
Speaker A
So, it should log on to our inverter. Wait, this is sick. No way. How did you get this hooked up?
Speaker A
We don't even need the—it's Wi-Fi. We didn't have it last time, or did we?
Speaker A
I just never did it. We don't even need the laptop in here anymore. That's sweet. When I'm talking about all the parameters we can change, this is what I mean.
Speaker A
This is what the core parameters of the motor are mostly up here. Boost, fleek, fleek skirt.
Speaker A
These sound like—they sound like, like, um, can I say hood terms? The fleek. Turn the, yo, turn the fleek up. Why?
Speaker A
You're a fleek, dude. Yeah. Okay, so we got uncommon maxing. Who made these?
Speaker A
And I've already tuned a lot of these to make it work at all. If you mess up any of these, you'll just blow everything up and nothing will ever work again. Trust me.
Speaker A
So, IDC Max is what is throttling us right now. I can go up to 600 with this motor.
Speaker A
Maybe more, maybe 700 before the batteries don't like it very much. All right, there we go. So, we can't get reels quite yet, so I'm just going to just do some calculations.
Speaker A
All right, we're currently drifting into a train bridge.
Speaker A
There's more eyes up there. The bill was hit him. All right, I've seen enough. Let's go back to the lake. [music] [music] White was a good choice. Look at that.
Speaker A
Sticks out like crazy. It's so bright. Holy smokes. Okay, I'm going to try the cruise control.
Speaker A
What the heck? It doesn't work. Does not like that. dude, it's just working. No way.
Speaker A
Yeah. So, the cruise control, I didn't think about this. It's really dependent on the RPM of the motor. So, if there's any like surging, it's kind of going crazy. But I'm thinking at low speed like this, it might work.
Speaker A
Okay, we have some cruise control issues to solve. Why does it have a cam? My Tesla boat has a nasty [laughter] cam in here.
Speaker A
Pack amperage is the current we're pulling out of this boat. So, as we drive, that's going to change.
Speaker A
And we can see how many amps it takes to stay at like 20 miles an hour or something.
Speaker A
4 miles hour. 8.8 amps. All right. I'm just going to get it on plane and kind of see what the data looks like. Dude, ready?
Speaker A
160. So like right now when we're cruising along like now that's 10 amps. So that would be like going 20 m hour in a Tesla. So, when we were getting up on plane, it went to 200 and it went to 350
Speaker A
when we were trying to go fast. The speedometer quit working, so I gave up.
Speaker A
How does she look from shore? So sick looking, dude. Wow. I love it. That thing goes so fast.
Speaker A
dude. Yeah, it's a million times faster with just me in it, I think. Oh, thanks. You calling me fat, bro?
Speaker A
Both of you. Oh, okay. Was like 3/4 throttle and we are at like 50% speed.
Speaker A
We could tune this thing to go like however fast we want. Let's do a dig. Huh?
Speaker A
Hit a dig, bro. Ready? Yeah. There's no gas in it. Dude, this is so sick.
Speaker A
It's a very unique experience. I've got our motor tent pulled up here. We're at 55° C.
Speaker A
It's just so awesome. I think it looks really good. It actually looks really sick with the hood pop.
Speaker A
Dude, such a show vehicle. I'm super happy with it. It looks great. Thanks for coming along on our journey of building this project. We're going to be doing more videos testing the top speed, refining this thing, and using it
Speaker A
way more on trips. So, make sure to come back and check it out. Huge thanks to Tuby for sponsoring this project. You can watch this series and more on Tuby.
Topics:Tesla jetboatelectric boatinverter tuningelectric motor generator effectEV safetycavitationbattery lifeDIY electric vehiclejet pumpProp Department
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