ITS ALIVE!!!
I've been working on the mower all day and I just got back from my first trip around the yard! Oh yes, I had a big ol EV grin on my face!
I mounted the motor up with the new pullies on it. I had one deep cycle laying around and one starting battery. So, I pulled the battery out of the Paseo to make three batteries. The deep cycle got shoved in the steering column box and the other two got strapped to the sides. I wired it all up with the ammeter and shunt, and used a digital multimeter to keep an eye on the voltage.
Here is the setup:
Unfortunately, I didn't hook the drive belt up correctly, so there was a quite a bit of belt slippage. I'm looking into fixing that as I type this.
I did get some good numbers though. Just having the motor on and spinning the transmission draws about 25 amps. Oddly enough, putting it in gear and driving around takes just above 25 amps once you start moving. Until you're up to speed it takes a tiny bit more, but not much. However, once I dropped the mower deck and engaged the blades the amperage shot up to about 100! As the blades increased in speed and leveled off, the amperage dropped back down to about 75. This is higher than I was hoping, but I'm also hoping that the slipping belt has something to do with it. If the mower is going to draw 75 amps, I'm going to need some decent sized batteries to make sure I can mow the entire lawn all at once.
I also thought it would be nice to show a video at least of it starting up. Its a bit loud only because
everything on the mower rattles. You never notice this when you have an engine roaring though!