Electric mail trucks, baker equipment

I use to work for baker equipment as part of a co op with vcu. While there I came upon the discussion of putting larger motors on my wheelchair with the mechanics and we went into great detail about what motors to use, controllers and batteries. One mechanic told me they use to build electric mail trucks for up nawth somewhere for the post office before 911 when the program was axed. From what I understand they looked like the regular mail jeep like trucks but used a 9 inch or so pumpkin like motor the floor was made up of a layer of batteries and it had a small fist sized controller. The mechanics liked them and was shocked at how simple they were.

Just thought i would share. As for the wheelchair that uses 2 400 watt motors and a 70 amp 24 volt controller, I wanted to go to 36 volts or three batteries, 2 golf cart motors with those go cart torque converters on them, off the shelf go cart parts and dual speed controllers one for each side and a mixer for a joystick. I want to smoke my tires if desired.

It's kinda appropriate that I post here I suppose /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

I agree, smoking tires are excellent. Even if it's on a wheelchair /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif (actually, it's cooler)

Darell.....????? Hello.... Is this thing on???? Foof Foof testing 1..2...3
Hello Darell??????

Darell must be on his treadmill recharging his battery operated cars? Must be too much of a drain on his hamster to run his computer?

Just thought I would share. I hoped maybe some of you guys knew something about it, other wise I would of jsut messaged him instead.

Well, I don't know anything about electric mail trucks but it is still intersting to know cobb.

Maybe you should talk to these guys

http://www.suckamps.com/

I've been trying to get my hands on one but they're hard to find

Thanks for the link and comment. I was banned and cooled my behavior so I could visit this site. Lots of other smart interesting people here too.

I use to do searching for evs and what not when I was in so much pain I only slept a few hours a week and used it to kill time between class and work. Now I have less pain, I spend less time online. I find new suff everyday on evs when I look and it is just amazing what is out there.

I have never built an ev, but other projects can cost a few hundred in hardware alone. It cost me 50 bucks to attach a car seat back to my wheelchair to make it more comfortable and give it a varible angle seat back. THe car seat was free. I do have an extra wheelchair motor that needs rebuilding or brushes and I think afterwards it would be ok. I did break the parking brake on it, but do not plan on using that for an ev. I had toyed around with the idea to make a tricycle out of my manual wheelchair by putting the motor on the front half of a bicycle so it drives the wheel and houses the batteries and pulls the wheelchair around. Unless I use a series of relays with a series of batteries to vary the speed in steps, it would be one rough ride without a speed controller and those aint that cheap either.

Hey guys -

I'm in Las Vegas at SHOT, so not on as much as usual! Thanks for the bat signal though. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

I know only enough about the postal program to tick me off, of course. And I only know the part where Ford was concerned. Ford was contracted to build 2500 (if I remember correctly) electric postal delivery "vans"(these were Electric Ford Rangers with the standard-looking postal truck box on the back). A few hundred were made and put in service. The drivers loved the, the mechanics' union wanted nothing to do with them. At that point, Ford offered up converted (still full gasoline) Winstar vans for the job, and took the EVs back. The federal and state money that Ford received for the EV contract was never refunded, thought the contract was unfulfilled.

So, I'm not sure if we're talking about the same program here, but these "vans" in CA were the effecitvely the same Ranger EVs that were just in the news recently.

Gotta run!

Wished I knew of your thing with electric cars earlier in the year and the mechanics at baker brought it up sooner.

The one thing I know for sure is that the program was axed after 911. About all purchases of equipment were haulted and they downsized after 911.

I do not have any info on what the trucks looked like, but they did say they were converted. They took an existing truck and made it electric with adding batteries, the electric motor, controller. Not uncommon, they take stock trucks, ford f250-750 without a bed and make it a bucket truck, so its not unbelievable that they took this task on.

I have no clue about the truck. I want to say they converted some mail jeeps like you see in small neighborhoods. The guy who was giving me the lecture was working on the tower in a bucket van and was pointing out where they put the parts in the truck. I do not know if this is really it or if he was just using the inside of that van as an example.

Myself my only experience is with electric wheelchairs and an electric scooter. First off a real disability product is 1000 times better than anything you see in a mart store for the disabled customer to use. They are faster, stronger, more comfortable, stable and have a longer range. I have used a few and its my experience most are nearly dead or die while in operation in sams or walmart. THey are slow and not to easy to move around a store. With an electric wheelchair with its tank like operation you have more power, but it can be a hand full on cross slopes. They hav eless range than a scooter. A scooter is like a car, rear drive with an axle and one motor and you point and shoot. They go faster, easier to steer, but can be hard to make a U turn in a tight area.

Although I have run out of power a few times some with advance warning others none at all, its not hard to get a push. Sit to let the batteries freshen up or plug into a charger for a few minutes to travel on. Amazing how a few minutes can give you an hour of run time.

As for the suck amps show and site. I never seen the show, but it looks like something I would be interested in. I read the site and although it looks like its really performs, I wonder what the real world range is, capacity to haul and the charger(s) used. From what I can gather its a 4 wheel drive truck with three electric motors. One for each rear wheel and one hooked to a VW transmission to power the front wheels. The only thing that sets up a warning flag for me is the fast those transmissions, the 005 or 003 series are know to strip 5th gear in the newer vws that have that flat 15 degree v6engine. From what it looks like they just stick it in second or third gear and go, not anything on shifting it.

As for the electric motors, I know you can push one to get 400% the rating, but you can also fry it, demagnatise the marnets or pop one off the inside of the housing. I saw something abour series wound motors, so maybe those do not use PM, but have built in electric ones like an older style car starter motor. THere is a wheelchair manufacture teftec who made a special transmission to steer the chair that can handle 3500 horsepower and uses 200+ amp controllers to drive it. I think its an eight pole motor and for demostration purposes they row a city bus with it. He has had guys ruin a few motors in the chair.