Getting a little extra grunt from a mobility scooter

one way to find out. in terms of range.

do you have an accurate measure of battery capacity remaining?

 

I do indeed. I wish the meter would show an average current draw, that would be very useful. It only gives me readings in real time, but still interesting and useful.

I haven't had much chance to get out and about just lately, but I've managed a whole (GPS monitored) 27.9km, at an average of 11.2 kmh and a maximum of 13.1 kmh.

Impressive given it's supposed to be governed at a max 10, and was previously more likely to average 7 in a constant journey without too many throttle down (GPS corrected, the actual speedo is wildly optimistic).

27.9km is probably about half of its brand new, stock off the shelf range, so I'd be at around 50% WHEN NEW after those km's and it only went downhill from there.

Brand new it officially had a range of about 50km, though I don't believe it was ever quite capable of that. Maybe 40km, when brand new, in reality.
18 months later, it had a range of about 3km. Maybe. If I'm feeling brave. The original 75AH AGM batteries only had a 12mth warranty, the Lithiums have 5 years.

Again, I can't help but repeat. 27.9km and I have no intention of charging anytime soon .

I present the magic of a stupidly overkill store of lithium power !!

The .25w is just the consumption of the meter itself, with backlight on. With storage of 2.5kw I think I can spare that , especially since most of that is the backlight which only comes on for a couple seconds when depressed.

99.59 is hrs of runtime remaining at present current draw. It goes down to between 15-20 hrs at the moment when I'm mobile. Obviously that will drop as the battery capacity diminishes.



I find myself waiting for a sudden extra shoe to drop down to 80% or something. I suspect it will move soon, but not super quickly though. Honestly even it was at 80% right now I'd consider that I'd made a great decision.
That in itself would mean 140km range in a perfectly linear world, which doesn't apply here of course. And I'm currently way ahead of that !!

I've a big day today. I'll probably double the kms, it will be interesting to see the result. That would make the total kms exceed the brand new scooters original range already, and barely touching capacity I hope.

 

ill have a buggy one day. maybe.

depends what happens. something tells something else will eventuate. but one must stay focussed on the positive as much as possible i suppose. especially if you are an electron.

==
my m.o. is that larger capacity things used lightly last longer.
there are other factors like aging of components.

but also if things are overworked they tend to wear out more quickly. ...so i try to do the opposite of that. biological machines require circulation.

an electric circuit. meh. can sit dormant for long periods of time.

when it comes to muscles though. they require maintenance and work to keep them at a healthy level. for blood flow. moderation.
atrophy is not good for us.
many hands make light work. or one hand taking one's time.

 

That's actually coming soon too. I've bought a basic gym. Upper leg and upper body strength are things that make life a whole bunch easier for me, the stronger the better. I'm already a pretty powerful guy in the upper body these days, that'll happen when your arms are also your legs and you refuse to allow anyone to push your chair. I can do one armed chinups, never been able to do them with 2 arms before now . I'm a little lighter and a lot shorter these days but still....
I still have my belly, that sucks. I exercise, I eat properly, and not very much. This gym besides giving me the strength I need for quality of life will also be my avenue to a 6 pack. That's the dream anyway, I've always had a whole slab.

Celcius G2 with Leg Press

 

abs are like 80-90% diet

and not as much fun as you'd think

 

The beginnings of the new cowl. No, I'm not building it out of corflute . this will be a mold. Waxed and fibreglassed, with some metal reinforcement and mounting shit. Then the corflute is peeled away and discarded, and I can start fettling the shape a bit more into something I like.





My range experiment is on hold. Today I ventured out, showing 84% and 41.5km travelled. 4km later, I had 0% and had to call my taxi to come and save me.

I had 2 theories. One was that the computer is programmed to understand it's capacity is only 75AH and believes it has already burned that? However the new battery monitor has also dropped to 0 so I can't see how the computer is causing that. Multimeter shows batteries at 10.2v each or 20.2 combined so they are indeed flat.

I'm hoping my second theory is a winner though. I haven't charged these batteries since they arrived from China. Not once. I tested them, at 13.9v each and 26.4v in series, so I assumed they were fully charged. Noob mistake .
The battery monitor is programmable, and I programmed it to have a capacity of 200AH. But if it only has 50AH in the tank, and I've told it the actual number is 200AH, it's going to be a bit confused until the volts start dropping, then panic?

I'm going to charge them properly and try again I think.

 

Looking at the length of that cowl gives me a few thoughts.

I don't want to make the scooter longer, but I would like a space behind the seat where my wheelchair can sit. I've tried just strapping the chair to the back of the scooter chair, but it's a headfuck on trains. It makes it just too long to manouvre well, particularly when a bunch of fuckwits with uber boxes on the back of their e-cycles are taking up all the space in the one area of the train where they are not allowed to be....

I even built a little trailer for the chair at one point which is great, but only if I'm driving the scooter the whole way. It wont fit on a train or taxi. My scooter isn't even allowed on a bus, its too long, wide and heavy and that will never change enough (some super compact light scooters can take buses, but even they also need a special permit to do so). That's particular annoying when they work on train lines and replace trains with buses and I'm stranded at the wrong end .

Another minor issue I've had with the scooter is the seat headrest sits just slightly higher than the natural opening height of my tame wheelchair taxi. He has to force the door up another couple of inches for the scooter to clear.

I don't adjust the seat. I don't really care if its forward or rearward. I don't use the swivel function. And those functions, along with the seat post you see sticking up in the middle of my corflute deck, add about 6" to the height of the seat. I can get on the scooter with relative ease without my legs on, but only because I'm strong enough to lift myself over. With 6" less height it would be soooo easy.

I figure I can shorten the steering column, to make it lower or I'll have apehanger handlebars . Bolt a SAAS or similar bucket with low bolsters directly to the frame and through the cowl, a lot further forward than the current seat is. Non adjustable.

Yhat will give me a substantial amount of extra space behind the seat for a wheelchair carrier without lengthening the scooter, and a lower centre of gravity for better safety.

I joke about not needing leg room but I do actually wear legs most of the time, they have to go somewhere. If they are in an awkward position it's just as uncomfortable as real legs would be. My stumps feel it all. Therefore I'll ensure I still have a comfortable place to park my rubber feet of course. I may have to raise/adjust the footrests/front guards to help with that, but totally do-able.

So full of win...

 

I've been messing around with a new cowl for the batteries, motor etc. It still needs a lot of work, and I have no idea as yet quite what I'm going to do to lower the seat and move it forward a little. "I have concepts of a plan" as someone famous recently said...

It's initially just corflute and gaffa tape but from little things big things grow.. or should I say from large things even larger things grow?





The method is to make a basic shape to use as a mold for fibreglass. Yes, it will work, and yes I know what I'm doing, having done this shit a million times before.
The mold, when complete, gets coated in wax (I use turtle car polish) then layers of glass and resin until I'm happy with the rigidity.

Once that's cured, the corflute is simply peeled away. Then a thorough cleaning with wax and grease remover, and any internal ribbing I add later for strength (and her comfort and enjoyment ).
I'll also build extra thickness and embed steel washers etc wherever I plan on mounting anything, and maybe shape it a bit so it doesn't look like a big square box....
Of course I also need to address the very rear of the scooter (a separate panel with lights built in) and the front of the scooter, the fairing around the steering etc at the same time. Some custom lighting and creature comfort stuff will be embedded in these, front and back.
Once I'm happy with the shape and fit, I'll be bogging and blocking back the visible surfaces to anal standards, because I have plans !!

Another of my many gifts is a special talent with a gun. Spray gun that is.. I've sprayed many cars and bikes, amongst other things, and won awards in the 80's for my work on panelvans.
With that in mind.. picture this.

A dark candy red paint base, with a Harlequin tint added to a dozen or so light coats of clear resin sprayed over the top.

THIS STUFF.

I've always known it as Harlequin, but its also called Chameleon, or Hypershift. You'll have seen cars changing colour as they drive past you.. that's the stuff, but they rarely seem to go the whole hog with some nice candy underneath.


Also.. I haven't been out much the last week or so, but I started a proper range test. The fancy battery monitor developed a fault, so it's just the scooters monitor. GPS tells me that the speedo is about 10% optimistic, so I'll assume the odo/trip is the same.
That would mean about 65 real km since its last charge, which is already way more than the original (exaggerated !!) claimed 50km range of the scooter.
I'm pleased with this.

 

is that resin stuff sticky as ?
how do you clean up..like your hands ? turps acetone? water? other?

anyway. youre a busy engineering bee.

 

Acetone. Damn stuff absolutely decimates my nail polish . Followed by moisturiser, it tend to dry the skin savagely as well.
The trick is to try and avoid getting the shit on yourself or anything else you value that you didn't want fibreglass on in the first place .

Breathing too much of it isn't real healthy either though, so there's that I guess... obviously won't be closing the garage door for a few days here and there over the next few weeks/months due to the stench of curing fibreglass either .

Spraying will be worse. Spraying resin is an art in itself, and my plan at the moment is to add the colour shifting additives to clear resin top coats sprayed over a candy base.
To spray resin you could use Acetone as a thinner, but only with breathing equipment, and it will hurt the integrity of the cured product. Much more than 5% and the resin would either not cure or never reach structural integrity.

You could add like 1% Xylene but that's worse than Acetone. Evil, nasty, toxic as fuck shit.

I prefer about 5% Styrene, if its necessary. Styrene is the solvent that makes resin a liquid in the first place. It's still not nice but it's not as bad as the other 2.

Best way to spray poly resin is in an airless gun with like a 3mm tip. Most times it wont even need thinning, with a big tip you just lay it on one fast layer at a time. Even with no thinners though, you wouldn't want to be breathing it, especially atomised and hanging in the air.

 

have a mask.

https://www.google.com/search?q=sty...QzNTJqMGoxNagCCLACAQ&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

styrene. never heard of it. but sounds like the stuff.

resins are popular with some wood furniture makers these days. ive used some to fill cracks in wood. also used two part resins that are mixed by hand like putty...cures in minutes. dont have long to shove it in the crack (as it were lol) before it sets hard. then can scrape it with a chisel or sandpapaer whatever. its good because it is like glue. holds the timber together. thats my long term project. painting a friggin fence with 200 x 200 corner posts, ornate trims. but i procrastinate. i do little bits every now and then. enough to stop the rot anyway. use a mini roller for the paint - latex shit. its good. durable and has some flex. tried using oil based paint outside - but it wont hack the UV. dries hard then cracks. latex/or waterbased paints only way to fly . oil based paints are ok as long as they arent in any direct sunlight. otherwise. no good.

and ive resorted to a 'waterbased' bitumen. only it isnt really waterbased. its a bitumen paint just with a slightly different than usual solvent. called a bitumen emulsion. but it is waterproof and can be painted over with the water based paint.
the old wood, most of it is seconds hardwood. rough as shit. i level it out a little bit just with spak filler. scrape-fill-sand-paint, repeat, over and over again. until im satisfied.
the initial sealer, or primer. yeh i still like the bitumen. it oozes more into the cracks and crevices.

i used to use Creosote. toxic as shit though and i cant buy it anymore fucking great for old wood. i actualy liked the smell but yeh supposedly carcinogenic.

i also use some other fillers. including linseed oil putty - painfully slow to cure, but i prefer it to silicone. cant paint over silicone. while it can be useful i tend to avoid it.

i can stretch the time frame of my 'projects' until doomsday come. even then it will never be finished. <3

 

Just sayin' ..

 

Wow, turned a lambo into a wedge.
Although if you rolled up, and the scooted cover lifts up, with a small gas release as if depressurizing, that would be next level. Maybe add a scan light to the front K.I.T.T style.
I think rather weirdly at this hour.