 Re: why electric
For my thinking the ideal would be 12volts.. however my motors are 24 volts.
From what I read an electric motor with brushes will become a generator when you are going downhill. If it isn't draining power, it will turn around and generate it. I saw a blurb on the net about a guy using a starter motor,and actually using the gear drive as the friction drive wheel. Just wired that mother up and off he went.. Those starter motors have to draw one heck of a lot of amps though. I also read somewhere that they won't hold up to the constant running but I have my doubts about that. I think they might work better than what I'm using now.
The electric motor for a friction drive like mine is about thirty bucks. The rest is in the batteries. You could buy two 10 amp hour batteries for about thirty bucks each.
Now I'm not going to say this is correct but here is how they say you figure the draw.
a 240 watt motor pulls 10 amps at 24 volts. so if you are running a 10amp hour battery you could be able to run 1hour drawing 10 amps if you ran at 15 miles an hour you could go 15miles. I always figure the actual loss is ten percent in addition to the use. So figure about 12 miles to be safe.
And batteries are funny things they drain and lose energy gas doesn't you last drop of gas produces the same energy as the first. Not so with batteries. Not to mention if you drain most batteries completely you damage them. It's all confusing.
Last edited by deacon : 02-25-2008 at 08:25 PM.
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