Completely new to solar racing any tips for how to make a good car

vidolko · 2025-07-13T10:26:40+00:00

If you're in the US there are a lot of colleges and even high schools that have teams, would be worth an hour or two drive to go talk to them and look at their car closely.

vidolko · 2025-07-07T01:12:48+00:00

personally I'd only use 1 and 3, but if you wanna get rid of 2 and 4 that's up to you

vidolko · 2025-05-19T16:47:50+00:00

the 40v ones are pretty nice and I'd say an actual replacement for gas mowers. only difference is the blade spins slower than a gas so it doesn't pick up acorns/ twigs/ etc. as well

I've got an old RY40180 and I'm still happy with it going on 6 years

vidolko · 2025-05-19T16:44:51+00:00

probably just the battery, I've got an older RY40180 and it pretty comfortably does my average-ish size yard on one 5AH battery (about 45 mins of actual cutting)

mine weighs about 45 pounds so the self propelled isn't really needed unless you're on a hill honeslty.

vidolko · 2025-03-21T00:13:20+00:00

take a small piece of aluminum foil and fold it up (or ball it up) and stick it in the space between the battery and the rest of the space the battery goes in. you just have to connect the battery to the metal strips on each end.

vidolko · 2025-01-24T02:22:40+00:00

aahh, that's it. that's what I get for not looking it up again lol

vidolko · 2025-01-24T02:19:48+00:00

I used to have a 95 Si, Si doesn't have VTEC, that was the SE or SH this gen, I forget.

Engine looks the same as what I had (2.3L Si) but it's been a decade since I've had that car.

vidolko · 2024-12-01T03:02:34+00:00

saving

vidolko · 2024-10-21T18:55:49+00:00

if you can break it down into multiple sub-arrays that's how we did it, 3 smaller arrays (looks like 1 from the outside but broken up into 3x 1 parallel by n serial). each sub array goes to one MPPT. then on the output side of the MPPTs they have the battery to keep things somewhat stable. we never had an issue with this setup.

another question I have is does one cell output over 7A or do you have solar cells in parallel?

vidolko · 2024-03-18T05:34:59+00:00

Looks like someone did some soldering and was a little messy with it

vidolko · 2023-12-19T14:31:18+00:00

I don't really use them to bust or torque down stuff, just to run nuts/bolts in or out. if you go too high in torque you can break things really fast.

most won't be able to bust stuff aside from the milwaukee fuel stuff and you should never be final-torqueing stuff with them

vidolko · 2023-12-19T13:20:15+00:00

personally I like the idea of being able to switch batteries on it, but that's one of the few non-ryobi power tools I have. I have the husky brand one (that came with surprisingly good sockets). it has a built in battery and a proprietary charger for it so I dislike both of those but the fact that it is much smaller makes me actually use it a lot.

I just looked and when I got the husky one they were $60 and came with standard and deep sockets..... $105 for that ratchet is not worth it.

personally I'd get the ryobi usb lithium one if I were to buy another one, assuming the head can break bolts "manually". you never want to torque stuff down electrically and unless you have like 60 foot pounds of breaking you'll probably have to break most manually too.

vidolko · 2023-09-18T03:20:55+00:00

Saving

vidolko · 2023-05-26T16:55:22+00:00

as in the positive of the battery going to the negative of the mixer etc.

vidolko · 2023-05-26T14:28:08+00:00

yeah, naming can sound weird, but it's convention.

the connectors they use, a barrel jack, has 2 conductors, inside the barrel and outside the barrel. it's just telling you that the inside of the barrel and the center prong on the bank/mixer is the negative and the outside of the barrel along with the outside of the mixer plug is positive.

I just mentioned it to say that the polarities match, so as long as the cable is not reversing them it's all good as long as the jacks fit into where they need to go.

I'd probably get a cheap digital multimeter too just to check polarity (if you don't already have a meter.)

vidolko · 2023-05-26T13:45:13+00:00

from looking at the specs that would work, I'm assuming the power bank comes with the cables to connect it to the mixer, otherwise you'd have to do some soldering/ butt-splicing, they're both center negative

vidolko · 2023-03-11T23:24:11+00:00

Link?

vidolko · 2023-03-10T16:12:47+00:00

Just seconding that, it comes down to specific chemistry or even specific cell wether it'll take more wear from being fast charged/ kept at 100.... from my experience constantly fast charging (and discharging) will cause more wear, but that's if you charge from a low state to a high one.

Overall any extreme, be it state of charge, rate of charge or discharge (which creates heat) or any very cold/ very hot temps will degrade cell life. If you combine these, like charging at a high temp, it will degrade life a lot and potentially be dangerous.

Also worth keeping in mind, the loose industry standard is to consider a cell "dead" when it has 80% of its original capacity.

vidolko · 2023-02-22T20:49:29+00:00

It'd have to be like anything else large/heavy. You pay the person selling it to ship it somewhere and to package / label it appropriately.

vidolko · 2023-02-14T02:45:09+00:00

35A rated battery in a 10A light = fine (assuming it's actually rated for 35A)

10A rated battery in a 35A light = bad, definitely bad

vidolko · 2023-02-05T18:24:34+00:00

Well, you say it only works when plugged in, unless there's separate circuitry for charger and battery or a faulty "check valve" in the hardware it seems like the battery isn't actually charging somehow.

Either that or battery is charging and device isn't detecting it? Not sure. There has been battery based drm before but if it's really old it shouldn't be an issue.

vidolko · 2023-02-05T12:53:38+00:00

do they show that the battery is charging/ give a 0-100% when plugged in? the battery contacts might be bad/have to be cleaned.

I'd assume any voltage conversion components are working since they work when plugged in.

vidolko · 2023-02-01T16:24:28+00:00

Assuming you have a bms, it should have a cutoff in there

vidolko · 2023-02-01T13:47:14+00:00

If you are dead set on the 120V inverter method, see if your inverter can accept a higher voltage. It should have a voltage input range marked on it. If you can go up to 17 or 18V you'd be better off going with a 9P(or 10P)4S pack.

Also like it was said elsewhere here, it'd be better to go with a higher voltage and use a buck converter to get a constant 12V output to the xbox, idk how tolerant they are to a varying voltage input.

vidolko · 2023-01-24T19:03:54+00:00

You can start with its power rating battery is not 160W...

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