Heavier than I would have thought?

[Scooterman]

This is a sunrise salsa/jive R2 rover sourced for me a few years back but only just got round to modifying. It had rigid thick seat back, swing away foot rests, and tilt. But fortunately I only need a power chair for outdoors mobility, I use walking frame and manual wheelchair indoors. So I don't need rehab seating.

I already have a salsa/jive R2 with custom seat, etc but wanted a backup chair. They're both the same spec 120A r-net and 4-pole 6mph motors and BM's programming.

The old one has 150Ah lithium, this has 230Ah lithium.

The seat base is 20mm hardwood ply sandwiched and bonded between two sheets of 1.5mm aluminum. The rest of it is 6000 series aluminum. It's plenty robust enough for my weight 52kg.

Anyhow I decided to weigh chair on two sets of bathroom scales with decking board across each one. Lifted front wheels onto scales/board, jacked up rear and slid scales board underneath then lowered so chair was sitting on both sets of scales. Total came to 106kg

I was surprised it is that heavy but I suppose everything adds up? The lithium pack is 39kg + Motors + Wheels + frame + battery box

[Scooterman]

.

[Burgerman]

Mine is 185kg...

About DOUBLE yours. And I am double your weight too.

With that weight, and 230Ah you should be able to leave the country.

[Scooterman]

I'm not surprised! But then it's needs must. You need the rehab seating.

Is your bungalow concrete floors or a suspended timber floor?

[Burgerman]

Both.

[Scooterman]

PS: A WAV taxi firm where I used to live changed their policy and refused to take power chairs. I don't know why, all I can surmise is someone using a power chair had an accident. Either a joystick accident or a heavy user in a heavy powerchair broke the ramp?

[shirley_hkg]

100kg is basic.

Mine is 400lb net.

[Scooterman]

The lithium pack is 39kg

Meant to type 30kg, not 39kg.

[Scooterman]

Mine is 400lb net.

181kg same as BM

[Scooterman]

With that weight, and 230Ah you should be able to leave the country.

If I ran them really low I reckon I could get 100 miles on tarmac

EDIT: Although leaving the country is not a bad idea.

[Burgerman]

Over the last 10 or 20 years chairs went from around 90 to 100kg up to 175 to 190kg. Almost double the mass. Because of modern seating options.

The extra rehab options on my Salsa make it DOUBLE the weight of your Salsa. Worse, faster chairs, like 8mph ones take 30% more Ah per mile as well. And the speed options also increased over the years on many chairs.

During this time people started complaining that their older batteries lasted longer and had better range...
Moving an extra 100kg around means that you double the Ah used for every manoever, every mile, every speed, every day.

When you try and take double the power from a battery in the same time, then you also get much higher Peukert losses too.
So now your 80Ah battery is only giving you 30 to 40Ah instead of the 50 it gave you on a lighter chair from years ago... But you now need twice as much but actually have less available!

As you discharge a battery more deeply, daily, the cycle life and capacity decrease faster in exponential fashion. Making this battery ever smaller much more rapidly.

So where a GRP 24 batt like the MK was fine, lasted several years, had sensible range years back. Today its about 4x worse! The battery hasnt changed. The USAGE has. Even many users get heavier over time! Yet people say its because MKs are now made in chIna... But they measure the exact same impedance, same capacity, same voltage, show the same discharge curves, and weight is the same as always. Nothing here changed.

[Scooterman]

I guess that why more manufacturers are now offering lithium+bms batteries for an additional cost of course!

[Raro]

The Permobil F5 Corpus VS weighs just over 200 kilos.

[Burgerman]

But they dont understand batteries.
They are doing many things wrong.

They offer the same drop in lead brick replacements with built in BMS as we see on amazon. Those have way too small Ah since the way they are packaged inside grp 24 shells, wastes space. And they nesassarily need to waste even more space to fit a BMS in there too. So instead of getting 6 or 7 times the range, giving the pack an easy life, with shallow discharges, endless range, they give you around 50% better than lead unless you run them dead and stop suddenly and end up stuck, with a short battery life...

Or they use the firework lithium ion packs!

And all this a decade and a half LATE!

[Dan]

And the UK has a legal maximum unladen weight limit of 150kg for Class 3 powerchairs being used on public roads. I have never seen a wheelchair manufacture warn their customers that some of their chairs can't be used on public roads.

If you intend to use your mobility scooter or powered wheelchair on the road, it must meet specific legal criteria:

Maximum unladen weight of 150 kg (330 lbs)

Maximum width of 0.85 metres (2'9")

Speed limiter for pavement use (4 mph)

Effective braking system

Front and rear lights, reflectors, and indicators

Audible horn

Rear-view mirror

Flashing amber beacon (if used on dual carriageways)

Registration of Class 3 vehicles with DVLA is mandatory but free of charge and includes licensing in the disabled taxation class.

[Burgerman]

First I have to say that in the UK with labour in power laws are optional. If you are shoplifting, thats fine as long as its under £200. You get arrested for a mean tweet if the left dont ike it Its fine to infest london every weekend pushing marxist lefty pro hamas/muslim propaganda and threatening to kill jews, but if you wave a union jack you get arrested.

So a few "laws" regarding wheelchairs are pretty much irrelivant.

And the UK has a legal maximum unladen weight limit of 150kg for Class 3 powerchairs being used on public roads. I have never seen a wheelchair manufacture warn their customers that some of their chairs can't be used on public roads.

Quite. Because nobody cares.
And yet I have 4 chairs that have and have the following:
-Invacare storm 4 xplore brushless with heavy centre footplate said 192kg on the chassis plate.
-Sunrise Med custom build with centre plate, SALSA, with 182kg on the name plate.
-Sun med Q700 and again it now has a centre footplate, which is heavier than the swingaways it came with 177kg on the plate.
-And a 172kg Dietz chair, with double armrests and power centre footrest.

One came with a mirror! Never fitted like every other chair I ever saw.
All were intended for the road, and included lights on 4 of these to the required EU/GB standards.

If you intend to use your mobility scooter or powered wheelchair on the road, it must meet specific legal criteria:

Maximum unladen weight of 150 kg (330 lbs)

Nobody cares...

Maximum width of 0.85 metres (2'9")

Never saw one that wide?

Speed limiter for pavement use (4 mph)

Thats not true. It can either be limited to 4mph or faster as long as you have some means of knowing speed. Just like a car.
That means of limiting speed can be a joystick, programming or whatever.

And again, nobody cares!

Its against the law to ride a push bike, scooter, electric bike etc on the pavement too. Thousands run into and past me every year.
Nobody cares unless you say something a lefty doesent like.

Effective braking system

Non of our chair have any brakes. Only a controller that can slow us down via its engines...

Front and rear lights, reflectors, and indicators
Audible horn
Rear-view mirror
Flashing amber beacon (if used on dual carriageways)

Always called cabbiageways now.
Most of mine no longer have lights. At least working. Because I dont care. The law doesent care.

Registration of Class 3 vehicles with DVLA is mandatory but free of charge and includes licensing in the disabled taxation class.

Again never done any of mine... Nobody cares!

[Burgerman]

With that weight, and 230Ah you should be able to leave the country.

If I ran them really low I reckon I could get 100 miles on tarmac

EDIT: Although leaving the country is not a bad idea.

Well that should be real easy. Maybe 130 according to my calcs. It depends on road camber and hills. So where you live.

You get 25 miles according to sunrise from a set of lead bricks with their tennis court test.
And you get around 40Ah from the batteries before you grind to a halt.

So YOUR new batts, are actually 244Ah, thats what mine measured, and thats what the green paper spec sheet says for each of my 8 cells.

So 244Ah real and usable, divided by 40Ah from the lead is: 6.1 times as much energy. Thats the same as TWELVE MK gel lead bricks...

So... Lets say that you only get 18 miles range and not the 25 claimed from lead. I dont trust that test. That still means 6.1x 18 miles. Or 109 miles.
So where does the extra 21 miles from my 130 estimate come from?
Well 2 things. Its lighter than stock. Less draw all day. And its 26 volts not 24 volts. That means the current draw on the battery is roughly 4% less all day on top.

[martin007]

I was surprised it is that heavy but I suppose everything adds up? The lithium pack is 39kg + Motors + Wheels + frame + battery box

It's a standard weight.

[Burgerman]

Power module,
Joystick,
Loom,
wheels,
Tyres,
Frame,
Seat,
Arms,
Batts,
Motors (ever picked up a pair? )
Casters, bearings, many brackets and stuff, all adds up. Wait till you try and lift a seat lift/tilt unit!

[Scooterman]

Wait till you try and lift a seat lift/tilt unit!

I have and can’t!

But ‘tilt only’ unit is a lot lighter than lift/tilt unit.

[ex-Gooserider]

Probably a trivial amount on the large scale, but that seat base sounds over-built... I have a couple of my project chairs that use what looks like 1/8" ~3mm aluminum sheet on the seat frame, and do just fine. The seat frames do have some cross members that help w/ support, but not that much....

ex-Gooserider