(ET) Snow's over, E20 is tired...

[Christopher Zach <cz alembic crystel com>]

Well, the snow is over. 20 inches, wet and heavy here in Relay. 
Shoveling it would be very un-fun.

I'm glad I did some blowing yesterday during the storm, enough to make a 
single-width path and turn-around up the driveway when it was about a 
foot. Because blowing a full 20 inches of snow is tough. Easier to do 
about 3/4 of a blower-width at a time when charging up the hill in L.

Putting the weight box plus 120 pounds of lead stops the wheel skipping 
problem. The tractor can now blow up the 40 degree driveway in L and 
keep it's chute full. Go too slow or too little snow and it can clog.

Today I widened the scope to the whole driveway. I also hooked up the 
E-Meter to one half of one string to get it working again (since the 
DC-DC exploded probably due to voltage spikes from the dead varistor). 
When going full blast into a 20 inch pile of snow each string is pulling 
200a. So the whole tractor+snowblower can pull a peak of 400 amps from 
the pack.

I wonder at what point the wiring in the tractor will start to become a 
factor.

This also explains why I need a >60ah pack. However the fact that these 
30ah cells can put out 7C in 32 degree weather is pretty nice. I like them.

Right now the pack is on charge. When I looked a few minutes after 
starting it was going at 10a per string (10.5/9.5) for a total charge 
rate of 20a. So in 3 hours or so the pack should be full and I can 
complete the top of the driveway (which includes the slush/snow from the 
street plows). Then maybe I'll trundle over to the neighbors.

But overall I'd say tractor+blower+chains+weight box+120 pounds=will not 
get stuck.

CZ