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This is my electric lawnmower. It is an old Sears Craftsman made in the mid-70s. It was built as an electric. They called it "The Quiet One". It isn't nearly as noisy as a gas mower, but it isn't quiet either. Most of the noise seems to be made by the spinning blade. I found this treasure in a thrift store, and of course I had to have it. |
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Here you get a look at what makes it work. Originally it used
a deep cycle marine type battery, but someone had replaced it with a car
starting battery. It had died long before I bought the mower, so
I swapped in another one I had lying around. That actually held on
for a whole season before it gave out. The mower is now powered by
2 used U-1 gell-cell wheel chair batteries wired in parallel. They
have been on there over 2 years and are working perfectly. They seem
to have much more capacity than I use, because I have never run short of
power with these.
The drive motor is a Bosch of unknown rating. All I know is it does the job very nicely. The original charger was missing, so I just use a 12 volt 6 amp automatic charger. There is a cigarette lighter type outlet on the back, where the original charger plugged in. It makes a handy power source for other 12 volt items. As a joke I mounted a headlight on it to mow in the dark. |
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This is my next project. It is an old MTD riding mower I picked up. I have a 2 hp GE golf cart motor waiting to go into it. If you look close you can see the motor already in place. It isn't hooked up yet though. I really haven't settled on a layout yet, but it is probably going to end up a 24/48 volt switching system using group 27 marine batteries. I was mainly going to use it to push snow, but I lucked out and we didn't get much this past winter. Of course, next winter will probably be worse. |
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