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Old 01-14-09, 08:34 PM   #2
MetroMPG
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Join Date: Aug 2008
Location: 1000 Islands region, Ontario, Canada
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Here are the parts I've got:

Bike:



My "classic" GT Karakoram mountain bike. Mountain Bike Magazine "bike of the year" in 1997, woo!! Still delivering lots of mountain biking fun after 12 years. My biking friends have gone through 3 or 4 bikes apiece in the time I've owned this one. I've sworn to ride it until either (a) I snap it in half, or (b) replacement parts are no longer available. Hey, it still gets me up the same climbs it did when it was new.

Motor/generator:



This is a permanent magnet 12 volt DC heater blower motor scrounged from one of the 2 cars that were used to build the ForkenSwift electric car. It used to have one of those "squirrel cage" fans on the shaft, which I have already cut away, down to a rough plastic hub on a steel "D" shaped shaft.

I don't know the motor's rating, but I'm guessing it could pull about 5 ish amps continous in its life as a blower motor. If I can get it to output 5A, that would be a useful amount of current for charging a battery.

Battery (12 volt):



Don't actually have one yet.

I figured I'm probably just going to go around to the local garages/parts stores and see if someone will give me one that's recently been swapped out. If I can find one that'll take a 12v charge, that's good enough. I'm not looking for tons of capacity.

DC/AC inverter:



I've got one pretty much exactly like this one. 150 watts peak AC output. Good enough to run a laptop, clock radio, or a small fluorescent lamp.

Instrumentation:



Just a regular inexpensive digital multimeter, with a 10 A current function as well. So I can monitor how much voltage & current I'm stuffing into the battery and how much I'm draining it down when basking in the power being used to run my vast collection of fun & useful consumer electronics!

Up next: plan of attack...
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