Re: Electric Rock Buggy

["Joe Smalley" <joes@worldfront.com>]

As someone who has gone camping around people with generators...Get the
bjiggest and quietest one you can afford. Get a high amp charger so the
charging period is as brief as possible. I would predict that a 10 KW
generator with a 10 KW charger could get you done in a couple hours as long
as you have a fairly lightweight battery pack. My Todd PC-40 (~600 watts)
can recharge a single optima to over 80% capacity in about an hour. A 6000
watt charger should be able to bring a 120 volt string of optimas up to 80%
capacity in about an hour as well. A 10000 watt charger should do a 192 volt
string in the same amount of time. Parallel strings take twice as long with
the same wattage charger.

There are few things that irritate camping neighbors more than having a
Briggs and Stratton running full bore all evening (social hour) or all night
(sleeping time).

On our last campout, the guy two sites down had a 1200 watt generator
running a 6 amp 12 volt charger to charge his trailer battery. He would put
one on the charger and leave one in the trailer where his wife sat reading.
When the lights got dim, she would tap him on the shoulder and he would put
the charged one in the trailer and put the dead one on the charger. We were
there for three days and I remember only about half an hour when his
generator was not running. I tried to talk to him but he never ventured far
enough from the generator to converse. I feel sorry for him. We were on the
Washington coast between Forks and Queets. The surf was breaking a couple
hundred feet from the campsites and we wanted to go to sleep to the sound of
surf breaking. Instead we only heard this guy's generator. We moved the
morning after the first night to get away from the noise.

 Joe Smalley
Rural Kitsap County WA
Fiesta 48 volts
NEDRA 48 volt street conversion record holder
joes@worldfront.com


>>Some type of APU (diesel generator?) onboard might be nice, if I have the
>>room.  This vehicle will be fairly small, though.  I may not have room for
>>any type of APU.  I will need to charge it in the camp grounds, overnight,
>>while at events.  I will need a generator big enough to charge it while we
>>sleep.
>
>For rock crawling, you only need a 1 or 2 cyl diesel to run the generator
>(preferably DC).  As far as power use, imagine running the course without a
>motor at all, just draging yourself around with a 12,000Lb Ramsey winch.
>>
>>Any thoughts on a Generator?  Will a 4K generator charge it?