Leaf pusher
 

I'm tossing around the idea of building a tiny leaf pusher.
I have couple of 5hp briggs and stratton engines. I'm thinking a go cart cvt and 1 wheel.
It would probably only have a top speed of around 45mph. More of a test platform, I don't think it's practical unless I had at least a 10hp engine.

How is this fossil fuel free, it never was, the leaf is powered mostly by natural gas and the leaf battery literally has coal in it.

"We'd all love to see the plan"

Any idea on their torque output?

About 7 foot pounds.
No plans I just make it up as I go along. Seems to always work out well.
I would use a 5hp briggs and stratton engine, either a 40+ year old flat head or a much newer OHV that I recently made run by replacing the cylinder head and doing a valve job. But I would definitely use a go cart CVT as I can't perfectly predict the optimum speed.

How you going to do the throttle?

I also think your will have to have the electric motor give you an assist when starting from a dead stop.

If you geared it where it would pull from a dead spot, I don't think it would go 45 before hitting redline. The CVT gives about a 3 to 1 gear advantage and then go to about 1 to 1. The redline on those little engines is 3600 rpm, but you can push them to 4K pretty safely. Just remebering when I played with gocarts as a kid, the carts when geared to go 45 were pretty slow starting off. I realize the CVT is giving you a 3-1 gear advantage, but the go carts weighed around 250 lbs with driver and your leaf is more than 10 times that amount. given your 7 ft-lbs of torque, times 3, your still at only 21 ft lbs trying to push a 3500 lb car.

Still a neat idea to extend range.

He would need to do this in miniature

https://www.google.com/amp/s/insidee...-extender/amp/

There is a thread on it in the imiev forums and it’s also not the first VW EV pusher trailer folks have been making them since the 70’s

The way it was controlled was on/off or clutch

It always ran near WOT and with 5hp no need for an electronic throttle though it’s not complex, needs a rhiostat and a stepper if he wants granular throttle.


The former Insightcentral wizard made an ewheel for his Insight to slowly drive electrically off the trailer hitch my guess is a similar design would be needed here to get enough traction and yes he has the design on his website

My cousins have modified brigs for more power, get it up to 6 grand and it wears out faster and makes you go faster

My guess top speed of 25, that is how fast my fathers 5hp zx40 tops at.

Fewer torque than most 125cc motorcycles, and in a much less rev-happy engine. Not sure to which extent it could serve for anything other than allowing some limp-home ability at a very slow pace. Well, unless you look at some tuning applied to such engines in go-kart racing.

Depending on the cvt they start out about 3.3:1 and they over drive to about 1:1.2 and then final drive will be about 4:1, I'll be looking for up to 1,000 rpm at top speed dependingon tire size.
A 3,500lb car, haha haha the leaf weighs around 3,800 pounds with me, the spare tire, my tool bag in it.

For throttle control I would use a long throttle cable.
Just a test platform. Not for driving around town with. I'm going to put it on a secondary state highway and see what it does.

I wouldn't really hold my breath for that, but I would be actually interested to see the results.

good idea
 

This rpm start isn't bad at all. If only there was a plan, as written above. But I'm waiting for the developments. :) I just joined you. I would be very happy if I could contribute anything.