Reply To: Budget thrusters

Forget the Controllers?

Bypassing the controller gives around 4% more juice to the motor, so the controller, as expected, is somewhere around 96% efficient at max speed. Eliminating the controller pushes the total on my setup to 95% of the rated power (47.5 of the rated 50 amps) i.e. 570 watts or 0.764HP.
If the motor/s are only to be used as thrusters it may well be a better option to simply install a three way contactor and three way switch, the ones used for controlling a windlass.
The only reasons I can fathom for using the controller is, if you would use this for trolling and/or as an electric dagger board.
Using contactors would definitely simplify the installation, fiddling with those tiny controller wires was painstaking work. This will also leave a much neater setup with only two small switches at the helm.
The downside is the contactors are around 150USD a pop.