Hi from South Carolina

[cwalker1960]

Hey Everyone,
I kinda found this site by accident as I was looking for a 48volt controller for brushless motors to drive a joystick controlled buggy/cart. Not like a dune buggy or anything, it's just a cart to take hunting to help carry gear and hopefully game back out of the woods. At first I hadn't intended on it being large enough or heavy enough to actually ride, need it light so it can be lifted into the back of the truck by one person if need be. I started with the idea of a used mobility scooter but steering is mostly uncontrolable unless you're actually on the vehicle. After playing around with a powered chair that seemed to be my best option as it could be controlled with something as simple as one of the wii numchuck joysticks. Burgerman, when I seen your chair with the huge atv tires I had to stop for a read. The chair is amazing and super cool. I'm still working out the details of my project I think gearing is gonna be an issue for me , I only need the cart to travel at decent trail walking pace but after thinking more about the whole setup I'm leaning toward the possibility of mounting a removable seat maybe like the pedestal mounted fishing seats so maybe it could be ridden at least for portions of the hike. At any rate thank all of y'all for having me on here and thank y'all for all the hard work, designing, engineering, testing and mostly for sharing all the great information available on this site. Hopefully I'll be able to get my little project going with everything I've gained from being here.

[Burgerman]

If you only want low speeds, it will be much simpler to use a stock 24V wheelchair system. And esp brushed motors and stock wheelchair controllers. Brushless and 48V add a mass of complications and then you will end up with way more speed than you need.

[cwalker1960]

Thanks Burgerman, first off i'm sure I'm posting this in the wrong place now since we're almost into a discussion . Yeah I have already considered that, in fact I actually have an old powered chair with the larger diameter wheels that I'll be using parts from to make the cart, controller and all. When I mentioned 48 volt in my first post that was just how I came about your site. Back then I was thinking of using geared hub motors for it but couldn't find a suitable reversing controller let alone one that interacted with two motors. At any rate I've already made a set of hub adapters and have some old four wheeler tires mounted to the motors and them being even larger than the original chair wheels it's way too fast (is that even a thing, LOL). I really haven't looked in the gearbox yet to see if there's any swapping out gears to lower the speed but if not I'll prolly end up making some spindles so I can put sprockets on the motors and wheels. at least then it'll be easier to test different gear ratios. zero turn lawn mowers offer some front caster options but unless I can find a salvaged one, the parts cost are ridiculous so prolly have to fab all that too. also thinking the front axle is gonna have to pivot to some degree because both rear wheels always having traction is pretty important when it's for differential steering. maybe i just need to mount a lift in the back of the truck and forget about how much this thing is gonna end up weighing.

[Burgerman]

Yes too fast is quite a critical thing.

If the thing is say 2x too fast, then it draws 2x more current at ALL speeds and every manoever. And so thats pretty important! It also means that you need double the amps to reach the same torque level. So to climb a ramp or turn in place requires very powerful controllers and causes more rapid heating up and current rollback for protection. And so torque, range all suffer.

[ex-Gooserider]

I've seen a couple of home-brew off road chairs that used a chain and sprocket setup off a brushed WC motor to drive big ATV tires - had the potential advantage of getting the motors higher up so as to get more ability to go into wet / muddy stuff, as well as gearing down to get back the speed / torque range of the stock wheels....

The chair I'm particularly thinking of was an effort to make a 4WD skid-steer (I know, bad idea!) out of a Pride Jazzy - I never saw it working but the guy that owned it said that it was slow, but would go over almost anything...

Might be a simpler approach...

ex-Gooserider