Firduo 65162 + good price

Hello guys,

I am looking for good motor but not too pricey for my first project. I already have Flipsky VESC6 60V200A ESC, and I am planning on building 18650 battery pack. (12s12p). I was thinking of buying freerchobby 66160 motor, but I got bad reviews. Now I found this motor (Brushless Motor Sensorless Amphibious Fully Waterproof motor 65162 | 1 - Firduo). What do you guys think about this? I think its way better option than freerchobby one. (100eur more). With code it comes 380eur shipping included and I think this is really good price. Any recomendations about this shop and this motor are really wellcome.

Best regards Luka

I got this motor, been using it since a year, works fine.

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Hello, I hear that you successfully run this firduo motor. Are we talking 65162 or 65161? I have the 65162 100kv and VESC 75200 from firduo and I’m struggling making this motor work correctly.
I’ve been running it with a 14S14P setup of Samsung 30T 21700 setup FOC mode and it would not start well at all got to be really gentle on trigger at first otherwise it would cogg then I got all type of fault abs current over limit no matter how high I would set the abs max. Then I realised the 100kv is max 120A on firduo’s specs with a max of 12S… still on the RT data i got up to 195A in max value. Is that even possible? I decided then to respect the data sheet using only 12S and re write the VESC with max current 120A it would not even start on FOC mode after running motor detection. works correctly though on BLDC until the max current is reached and then shuts off even if I leave abs max current at 420A by default after motor detection. I checked the other limits erpm, battery, wattage everything is under threshold. RT said I logged a max of 4000W when on 12S with cells at 3.9v where I should theoretically at least reach 5000W I’m getting a bit lost here. Some help would be appreciated.
Wondering even if the choice of 100kv vs 120kv was a smart one since it looks like I’m limited to 12s and apparently 120A. Total weight me + rigg is 140kg on a takuma he 1500. Really hard to get planning.! Here some pics of the setup also. And I run it with the crappy propeller that came with the kit that I’ve reduced to 160cm diameter.

PXL_20230914_135954365|666x500



That’s an interesting setup :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: you should lift and plane pretty easily with it so something is off.

Don’t mind the firduo motor parameters, they are more a guide than reality, and 120 vs 100kV is not a dealbreaker. First, did you turn off phase filters in the vesc tool? If not then detection will not work properly and you’ll risk killing both esc and motor.

Some things:
I’d recommend switching propeller ASAP, that one will always be less than optimal.

Streamlining is crucial:
How did you mount the motor?
Where do you run the cables? Inside mast is good, outside needs to be covered

It seems the lowest point on the mast is the propeller, it needs protection or the smallest bottom contact will destroy it

Thanks for your swift answer. Yes initial plan with that build was to keep reuse my wing board but avoid the bulky pellicase but it turns out it is still bulky… though more comfortable. god it is heavy to move around on land. I think next I’ll make a board dedicated to efoiling so I can keep things as slim as possible.

Yes phase filtering is turned off.
I’ve 3d printed a sleeve for the mast and all cables run inside from motor to board. Cables only exit at the back of the board. Of course there is a bit more drag than without the sleeve but I tried to keep things as slim as possible. The mast is short 75cm and that is why I chose the mount under the fuselage. Bottom of lake down my house is only sand and mud and it is deep so no chance of damaging things. I wanted to try also to have the propeller as close to the front wing as possible and with mount above the fuselage the propeller is nearly aligned with the stab making things less balanced.
Do you mind sharing your settings of the VESC? So I can try to understand what I’m doing wrong. When you run motor detection do you do it with propeller on or without? In air or under load? What do you choose large inrunner on the generic tab?


The large inrunner and so on mostly gets you automatic current limits, it’s not really important. Identification is done with no load at all, (no prop, no water)

You can set specific values:
150A battery current
200A motor current
300A abs max current

These are short term OK values so don’t go full throttle for ten minutes with these, more to get up on foil as they will cause some heating. If you get a lot of cutouts then something is wrong with the parameters.

I can’t give you all the parameters for the motor, i had to program on my desktop pc, can’t haul the board in to read them out.

Do you know how to foil? If not then it could be that you need to train starts.

Thanks and yes these are the same values I have more or less. So many other parameters in that VESC tool though I guess there is no shortcut and I have to dig into understanding all these parameters.
Foiling is not an issue been riding with foil on many supports for many years now. Been riding lift efoils also those are great if it was not for the price tag :roll_eyes: and well of course it is more fun to ride diy boards (when it works…)
Propeller is surely an issue as you stated. See if I can get my hand on a new one before the lake freezes. Maybe I’ll dig the forum and see if I can print one that is known to work well.
Thank you larsb anyway for having taken the time to answer.
If someone else out there is on the same motor and is willing to share his settings :+1:

Where are you located? I’d get a propellerking prop if i was in the EU or a Manta prop if you’re in US. The 3d printed ones work but they aren’t as robust and the prop is as important as the rest of your system.

Apart from that, if you’re getting those power and current numbers you really have enough to lift, either motor control is really inefficient or the drag of your setup is large and/or propeller not good.

I can get cutouts at max throttle just like you but i didn’t try to tune motor parameters, just ran the identification and it lifts down to 900cm2 wings @ 130kg

I’m in Sweden and yes i was looking at the propellerking the thing is the shaft of the motor is 12mm with groove and they don’t seem to offer that kind of option. I’ve downloaded a print file for a a propeller that is known apparently to work at least I can quickly rule out quickly this parameter out of the equation. will get a more robust one later. drag may be the problem but i don’t see why there would be more drag from having the motor under the fuselage. Maybe the drag comes from the propeller. but the thing that I didn’t log more than 4000 w at full throttle when I can read others can peak at 7kw hints that there is clearly a motor control issue. Since you suggested not to pay attention to the chinese specs on their website do you think it is an issue to run the motor at 14s when the specs of the motor shows 12s max?

If the propeller is too big, you don‘t get max power because you need rpm to get to max power. If you have a splined shaft you might try this prop, the original is very good:

Thanks for the file but the link is dead image

Should work: flite_prop_D144P217_cw.stl - Google Drive

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No, definitely not a problem. These motors are being used at 14s regularly. What will happen is that eddy current losses will increase with higher rpm , lowering efficiency slightly, increasing heating - but you’d need more rpm than 14s x 120 kV for it to become an issue.

(you’d also need a small prop combined with full throttle for longer periods to actually run motor like this and this basically never happens.)

ok so if I understand correctly the only benefit I could hope from running 14s instead of 12s is a bit more autonomy and a bit more top speed provided the propeller allows it. on the other hand with 12s the rig is 3kg lighter. It doesn’t seem really worth going 14s. Do you see any good reason why I should run it 14s instead of 12?

If you are OK with the speed at 12s then the main difference is the 17% increase in energy and runtime with 14s

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The diy mast adds drag and the prop is not good, these two will cause added losses. Do you have a normal mast inside the cover? If so, then the increased wetted area will mean it’s harder to get up, i don’t think it’s the main issue though.

What does it behave like when you start? Can you see cavitation on the prop?

I printed the flite prop (thanks sat_be for the file) and it is now curing the second coat of epoxy. In the meantime I’ve been tweaking the motor settings and it ramps up nearly perfect on FOC mode. Just out of the water and as it now can reach higher rpm it is obvious prop is cavitating preventing me to reach takeoff speed. Been pumping like a maniac to help but with inflatable board and extra layer of battery soft pad too much loss of energy. No success. I could feel indeed today all that extra drag created by the mast mount.
Tomorrow I’ll try the new prop hopefully this will solve the problem.

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Do you have a link to the prop?

see higher up in the thread Firduo 65162 + good price - #12 by sat_be

Just tried the printed flite prop. Feels lot better. No cavitating however and unfortunately I’m still left with my motor control problem. I thought I had tweaked the settings the good way but now that the propeller is more efficient and with more torque on the prop I get cutoff again at around the same 3000w. So f…ing much frustrating. How do you guys make your bench test at home to simulate load before heading to the water? Even if the lake is not that far it is not ideal having the computer at the beach and open the controller everytime you want to adjust something. VESC tool over Bluetooth doesn’t have all the desktop features.