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Post by earlwb on May 13, 2013 21:14:28 GMT -5
Nice tour... My parents used to live in Pittsburgh... And the next time you are passing through Quitman, I can point you to an excellent Mexican restaurant; Peralta's (sp?) built in an old house a couple of blocks down from the courthouse. Excellent stuffed poblano. In Sulphur Springs, try Los Mochis in the outlet mall shopping center; my favorite place by far. My favorite fajita beef chimichanga. Also, I can't belive you admitted to driving through Quinlan...  Well I sorta had to ride through both towns on my way to Pittsburg using the scenic route.  Thanks for the tips on the restaurants too. |
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Post by earlwb on May 13, 2013 21:10:36 GMT -5
Most of the scooters run the headlights, tail lights, and other lights off of the stator directly as AC. The turn signals, ignition system etc. use DC power. So when the engine is running the headlights should work. There is a voltage regulator and a bridge rectifier in there for recharging the battery and providing DC power of course.
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Post by earlwb on May 6, 2013 21:19:20 GMT -5
Of course this monster BBQ has been over at our local high school a few times too. Both of these monsters are from Texas too. Those homecoming pregame ultimate tailgate party kind of things "The Ultimate Smoker and Grill":  But even it was made small by this one here:  |
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Post by earlwb on May 6, 2013 21:05:44 GMT -5
That is a pretty neat BBQ grill. I think even Tim "The tool man" Taylor would be giving it approving grunts too. If I remember correctly, I think Los Angeles and the surrounding cities banned outdoor BBQ's already. I would not be surprised if they banned it in a lot more cities and towns too. That did remind me of one that someone made here in Texas too:  or this one too:  of course there is a mini version as well  |
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Post by earlwb on May 6, 2013 14:40:31 GMT -5
They have been steadily replacing all of the old wire loop or pressure sensitive sensors with computers using video cameras out here. The computer can be programmed to detect cyclists, motorcyles, trucks et cetera in the different lanes so it can change the lights accordingly to minimize red light time. They still have some old loop systems out there but I think they have them set to timer mode for the most part, the loop sensor wires are probably broken and it is too expensive to repair the road. So the lights wait for the camera and computer to get installed.
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Post by earlwb on May 6, 2013 14:31:20 GMT -5
No such thing, all Chinese with the Linhai 257cc engine in the scooter. But the original trunk box on the back fell apart and I replaced it with a Pelican Box. It has gone through several tires though.
Yes there were many oil changes too.
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Post by earlwb on May 6, 2013 14:10:23 GMT -5
I had mixed results with magnets. But in my case I used a couple of neodymium bar magnets which were quite strong. I think the best benefit was that the magnets caught several nails and screws that could have punctured the rear tire. But as to stop lights, I just couldn't determine if it works or not.
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Post by earlwb on May 3, 2013 21:01:32 GMT -5
The best way is to follow the spark plug wire to the spark plug cap. The engine has a shroud on it to help direct air flow from the fan across it, so the spark plug will be located at the top of the cylinder head, generally in the center, but it could be angled though. The scooter's plastic body works will tend to hide a lot of the engine, but they normally have a access panel on the scooter that you can remove to gain access to the spark plug.
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Post by earlwb on May 2, 2013 14:26:38 GMT -5
Some scooter designs tend to have a more weak alternator in them versus other designs or brands. It also sort of depends on how far you ride between stops. If you are going short distances it doesn't have time to recharge the battery, then it could be a problem after a while. The battery slowly gets discharged like that. So do cars too. I knew a lady who ran her battery down a few times like that in her car.
Now with my 250cc scooter, I did find out that in the summer months the radiator fan would draw enough power to slowly discharge the battery over time. It wasn't a huge difference but the fan drew enough power to have ithe scooter draw more power than the alternator could put out. But what I did was replace the tailights, and running lights with LED lights and then that dropped the slight negative charge rate and kept it even then. So now it doesn't run the battery down.
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Post by earlwb on Apr 29, 2013 16:36:36 GMT -5
Nice battery, I like that.
Yeah I can see it getting hot jump starting a car too. That likely exceeded its original design specs. But it did make for a interesting test though.
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Post by earlwb on Apr 29, 2013 15:48:03 GMT -5
Back to where someone stated that they had a battery pack and they used a 12v 2amp trickle charger on it. That pack may have a set of balance modules for each cell built in thaty lets you charge the cell until it peaks out and then stops the charge for that cell. With the huge car battery packs they run several strings of cells in parallel to get the coltage, current and capacity up to what is needed.
I know of a few guys that got the damaged automobile packs from some sources and they took the apart to get at the undamaged cells and built up some battery packs to use in their compeitition off road vehicles. Since the cells have their own built in circuit within each cell, one can charge them like a normal led acide car battery is charged. I think those were those big 12,000 mah cells too. I would not have minded having some of them myself either.
Now some older design car cells did not have the built in balance charge circuit, so you would have to use a charger like they use for RC models to charge the cells with. At present they don't make a advanced hobby LiPocharger that handles more than 48v in series for LiPo packs. But for replacing a scooter battery with a Lipo a three cell Lipo pack should do the trick, you just need to get a big one of around 10,000 to 12,000 mah or so for it.
Maybe parallel a couple of three cell strings together if needed to get the current capability up to what is needed if necessary.
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Post by earlwb on Apr 29, 2013 11:13:33 GMT -5
carasdad, quite a few of us use LiPo batteries in RC airplanes and RC cars et cetera. In that market they developed many special battery chargers designed to charge the LiPo (and LiFe) batteries (plus nicads, NMH and Lead Acid batteries too) that use a onboard computer to sense and monitor the batteries being charged. LiPo's have pretty much replaced Nicad batteries for those uses anymore. The LiPo battery offiers reduced weight, fast charging capability, and longer life and sometimes even a slower self discharge rate too. Another plus is one can parallel LiPo cells and or batteries to increase their capacity and current handling capability. But due to the high energy storage capability, there is some risk should the Lipo short out for some reason. They turn into Arc welders and can spew out a lot of toxic smoke and the heat causes some of the gasses to ignite into flames similar to a blow torch. The main ways to get a LiPo to catch fire is to beat it up and short it out or puncture it somehow, another way is to overcharge it beyond its fully charged level. The puncture exposes the internal parts to air and oxygen especially which reacts with the chemicals inside causing it to start to fail. Once a Lipo has started to burn, it burns very hotly and too hot for even water to put out. Beyond that there might be defects in production that can cause the first way to get one to fail to occur. They use a thin cathode and a thin anode material separated by a thin plastic sheet similar to Saran Wrap in thickness. They more or less take all three items and roll it up to make the cells. If during production some defects in the manufacturing process occurs then it can cause the battery to fail later on down the line. This happened a number of years ago with Sony having defective liPo batteries that had metal particle contamination in the manufacturing process. Thus when they make LiPo's they do so in extremely clean room serttings. But with the modern LiPo chargers, they monitor the cells constantly during charge and charge up the packs reliably without as much risk from overcharging. Now some older chargers where known to have issues if there was a power failure when the pack was charged and they would try to charge the pack again. But more modern chargers have software routines programmed in to protect against it. The cars and other vehicles that use LiPo or LiFe packs will have some sort of a sophisticated battery charger system built in that handles all the dirty work for you. With cars, using LiFe batteries is popular as the cells don't burts into flames if the battery pack integrety is compromised in an accident that manages to puncture or damage the cells. Now I normally always balance charge my LiPos. Some guys just charge them unbalanced, but not all cells are created equal and some cells may be more weak and not charge up to peak voltage, thus balance charging deals with each cell individually so you don't wind up damaging a weaker cell in a pack. But anyway the model airplane people have it all down to a fine art now. The rapid or fast field recharging is a popular method as with Lipos designed for high current discharge rates, the guys will fast charge at the flying field and use the pack right away so it doesn't degrade, thus they can get maximum life out of a battery pack. They all use special LiPo battery chargers for this purpose. Now then the charge rate is governed by the C rating for a battery pack. Specs/Terminology Any lipo on the market is going to have several parameters that determine it's application: - Cell count. Every lipo cell is roughly 3.7 Volts. Total amount of cells determines batteries total voltage. Ex: 2S = 7.4 Volts; 3S = 11.1 Volts etc. - Milli Amp rating. Thing of it as lipos fuel tank. You'll see anywhere from 50Mah to 12,000Mah batteries out there. Mah amount directly affects battries form factor, so make sure to measure your battery tray before you go out and buy a 12,000Mah batt hoping to run it for 2 hrs straight. - Discharge Rating: It's indicated with a small "c", preceded by a number. This number, along with the batteries capacity in Mah is going to determine the max amp output of your lipo. I will elaborate on this later. - Charge Rating. Indicated with a capital "C", preceded by a number. This number combined with batteries capacity is going to determine it's maximum safe Amp/hr intake when charging. So if we use a 2S 5,000Mah 40c 5C battery pack for example, it can be charged at up to a 25 ampere rate based on the 5C rating. Convert the 5,000ma capcity to 5 and multiply the 5 times the C rating of 5 and you get 25 amps for its max charge rate. But only do that with a good modern Lipo charger though. Its discharge rate means it could handle up to a max of 200 amps too. This is where we take the 5,000 and mulitply that by 40 and we get 200,000 ma or 200 amperes. Now that one fellow's idea about using a higher voltage pack is interesting as the charge voltage would never exceed the alternator's peak voltage. But I don't remember anyone using that before in anything, so I would have to think about it more. But it is a interesting idea though. Here is some further reading if you are interested: ref www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=209187 www.ultimaterc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=115264 www.rchelicopterfun.com/rc-lipo-batteries.html www.maxamps.com/lipo-care.php en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_polymer_battery www.thinkrc.com/faq/proper-lipo-battery-care.php |
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Post by earlwb on Apr 24, 2013 16:53:00 GMT -5
The lithium batteries are the wave of the future. But one needs to use a special charging circuit for them though. A regular battery charger won't be able to charge them properly without damaging them. The lithium polymer batteries can be dangerous as if something happens they can go bad and burst into flames on you. The more safe LiFepo4 batteries don't normally catch fire and thus would be more wise to use. You see the LiFe batteries in the hybrid and electric cars for that reason. But with a good LiPo or LiFe battery charger the batteries would have a much longer lifespan over the old lead acid batteries. One problem with lead acid batteries is that because of the lead and acid too, no one wants to make them much anymore as it is so environmentally dangerous to do so and becoming very highly regulated as well. Worse is the batteries seem to be getting worse and worse as to quality and are going bad much faster than they used to.
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Post by earlwb on Apr 24, 2013 16:44:37 GMT -5
Thanks, Now the last time I took a picture of the odometer on my 250cc scooter was this one. I have past that point though. So you ought to be able to get at least this far on one.  |
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Post by earlwb on Apr 24, 2013 16:39:42 GMT -5
The problem for the states were that a lot of Chinese scooter businesses were trying to sell scooters that didn't have approved safety equipment on them, non-DOT approved parts and were not EPA approved either. Some of the scooter importers tried to cheat the system as well. They did get away with it for a few years, but the various state agencies got wise to it and started to clamp down on them. The scooter importers are still trying various tricks and stuff to sell scooters though. Your best bet is to buy locally though in order to avoid winding up with a fancy lawn ornament where you have something that can't be registered in your state. There have been quite a few horror stories of people getting stuck with scooters that way too.
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