Stranded in the snow? How to use your scoot to survive!
by: lain - Feb 15, 2015 10:53:35 GMT -5
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Post by lain on Feb 15, 2015 10:53:35 GMT -5
So I'm not sure if everyone else is ontop of this stuff, but I've been into survivalist stuff and camping since I was a small boy. When I got my scoot a while back I saw so many applications for it to use it as a survival tool. Sure getting around on it in the snow may be out of the question, but you can still use it in other ways!
The power goes out, what do you do? Light some candles. Fire hazard... Instead, I choose to use my scoot as a power generator and backup battery power supply for small applications. First we hookup a line to the battery that can be used as a quick disconnect charging wire, or in this case a quick disconnect power source. Make sure to label the wires at both ends! Avoid silly mistakes with labels! lol Now we make a long wire that will go into the house from the scoot, at one end we have a little box with speaker terminals (I have used them for this, it works) to allow connecting a few different things, and a couple USB ports with a couple switches to cut off power to terminals or usb ports or both. The other end of course connects to the scoot, under the seat hopefully to keep it out of the snow or rain or hail or whatever.
Then we start the scoot, warm it up, and make sure it will stay on, in the snow I would turn the idle up to keep the engine running and then turn it down after 20 minutes when it shouldn't have any issues. After we have the scoot running and all good we can now use it as a power source. We can also use it as a power source when it is not running, but you do not want to run out of enough juice to start it up so instead just run it first! Survival means you are thinking about what could happen if something happened and how you would deal with it.
Got some spare scooter light bulbs? Hook a positive and a negative wire up to one, doesn't matter if you hook the positive to the regular or high beam filament because you aren't using it in a scoot, you are going to use it for light in a house. Hook up a switch to it, drape it or mount it in a household lamp and connect the wires to the power source of the scoot. There, now you have enough light to comfortably light up an entire room! You shouldn't hook up too many headlight bulbs though, this will be powering off the battery and the charging system basically and you do not want to strain them out! I have my headlight on my scoot turned off when I do this, it is good to have everything on the scoot hooked up with switches to turn things you aren't using off.
USB charging ports are very simple to make. Find a USB car charger, gut it out, hook up thin wires (I used wire I gutted from a network cable) to the positive and negative of the USB car charger (fuse is usually positive, the long metal brackets are always negative), and the other to a switch and ultimately to a 12v power source (your scoot). Now you can power many many devices that use USB to charge or power, like little LED lights, phones, tablets, cameras, etc.
The power goes out, what do you do? Light some candles. Fire hazard... Instead, I choose to use my scoot as a power generator and backup battery power supply for small applications. First we hookup a line to the battery that can be used as a quick disconnect charging wire, or in this case a quick disconnect power source. Make sure to label the wires at both ends! Avoid silly mistakes with labels! lol Now we make a long wire that will go into the house from the scoot, at one end we have a little box with speaker terminals (I have used them for this, it works) to allow connecting a few different things, and a couple USB ports with a couple switches to cut off power to terminals or usb ports or both. The other end of course connects to the scoot, under the seat hopefully to keep it out of the snow or rain or hail or whatever.
Then we start the scoot, warm it up, and make sure it will stay on, in the snow I would turn the idle up to keep the engine running and then turn it down after 20 minutes when it shouldn't have any issues. After we have the scoot running and all good we can now use it as a power source. We can also use it as a power source when it is not running, but you do not want to run out of enough juice to start it up so instead just run it first! Survival means you are thinking about what could happen if something happened and how you would deal with it.
Got some spare scooter light bulbs? Hook a positive and a negative wire up to one, doesn't matter if you hook the positive to the regular or high beam filament because you aren't using it in a scoot, you are going to use it for light in a house. Hook up a switch to it, drape it or mount it in a household lamp and connect the wires to the power source of the scoot. There, now you have enough light to comfortably light up an entire room! You shouldn't hook up too many headlight bulbs though, this will be powering off the battery and the charging system basically and you do not want to strain them out! I have my headlight on my scoot turned off when I do this, it is good to have everything on the scoot hooked up with switches to turn things you aren't using off.
USB charging ports are very simple to make. Find a USB car charger, gut it out, hook up thin wires (I used wire I gutted from a network cable) to the positive and negative of the USB car charger (fuse is usually positive, the long metal brackets are always negative), and the other to a switch and ultimately to a 12v power source (your scoot). Now you can power many many devices that use USB to charge or power, like little LED lights, phones, tablets, cameras, etc.
