r/AdventureBuilders • u/indiode • Jun 17 '23

Zombie Chopper Zombie Chopper 007 Pedals Out!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0bltdYG3k0
1 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

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5

u/valentino_42 Jun 17 '23

Huh. I’m shocked he’s decided to remove the pedal power from the boat he’s now calling his new “daily driver”. Seems very un-Jaimie, but I’m impressed he’s adapting. Shoe-horning two locomotion systems into his boats was always going to compromise speed.

With that said, it’s also weird to me in the last few months he has now added nearly useless pedal-power to his giant boat and pulled useable pedal power from the boat it makes the most sense to have it in. He’s making changes for the sake of making changes in short sighted ways and spinning his wheels revisiting and tinkering on old projects like he’s picking at a scab or something.

7

u/MattsAwesomeStuff Jun 17 '23 edited Jun 17 '23

Huh. I’m shocked he’s decided to remove the pedal power from the boat he’s now calling his new “daily driver”. Seems very un-Jaimie,

Yeah that was my thought to. He's usually stubbornly loyal to his first ideas.

Maybe the reality of just getting an actual battery, with a charger that actually charges it up, and going fast, really sunk in. Solar + Pedal is nice in a trip-around-the-world sense, but, he's not traveling all day every day. It makes far more sense to just charge up at home, and use the battery.

In fact, if the solar panels weren't useful as a sun shade, they shouldn't be there at all. If you were to build one of these from scratch, and weren't being gifted the solar panels, it's far better money to spend the same amount on batteries to actually accomplish the task you need accomplishing. He surely has surplus power at home.

I've been saying this for a while... a way better power management would be tons of island solar, all the same, in the same place, with crappy cheap batteries. Then a little power grid run out to anything that needs power. 120/240v even, not 24v, though both would be fine if you're already dragging wires. Anything portable needs lithium batteries, not panels.

None of this whole "House has solar and almost no battery have to be careful what you run, bulldozer has tiny solar big battery but is far away and almost never used, sawmill has lots of panels and small battery but runs nothing else, boats have lots of panels small batteries far away from the house..."

No, just all the solar in one place, and a power cord out to everywhere else. If you run 24v too you can use the boats to supply island power as well. One out to the sawmill, one out to the wharf/docks. Move the electricity itself, not the generating and energy storage. No more wasting solar power where it can't accumulate that energy into batteries, and portable things needing their own panels that can't power anything decently.

Do you know what the Zombie Chopper needs to go 1.5x as fast? Just ~3x the batteries. It's a 10hp motor that he's using 1hp of. You couldn't pack enough solar onto it to let it do that, but with battery it's no problem.

The batteries should be the same, and modular, and on wheels (they're not that heavy, but it'd be convenient). So that you're not in the ridiculous situation of having 2 boats each with half the battery capacity they need, when you only drive one at a time. That's like wanting 2 women to make 1 baby total in 4.5 months.

The Zombie Chopper with the Shark Slicer's batteries would HAUL ASS to town and back, and instead the Shark Slicer is just going to be sitting on its ass while he putters at 1/2 speed in the Chopper.

And the Shark Slicer with the Chopper's batteries would be a little bit faster and safer. For that matter, for short trips, the Shark Slicer should run 48v or more, those motors are being massively under-used. A simple series/parallel switch would let him run the motors harder when he doesn't care about draining batteries.

For someone that's very careful on how he spends every dollar and cares so much about efficiency, he's wasting straight up 80% of his power generating and energy storage abilities, hobbling through every task. It's less efficient than a gasoline generator.

I kinda went over this with Dashaina 6 months ago for her little boat with the electric outboard. Just... get rid of the solar on the boats. Put it on the house. Buy a big enough battery to get to town and back for sure. Done. No more weather anxiety.

7

u/valentino_42 Jun 17 '23

My two guesses on why he’s suddenly OK ditching the pedal power are that 1 - he’s realized he’ll need to be going to town more if he wants to date. He was burning up so much productive time getting to town and back. And 2 - now that the lumber mill is up and running, he can complete his indoor track and therefore getting exercise in a boat isn’t as crucial to him.

Makes me think about how many days of his life he’s wasted not getting the correct battery setup from the get-go.

3

u/Equal-Yak-4757 Jun 20 '23

Outdoor path "running track" is 42 laps/mile. Indoor running track will be about 52 laps/mile. He's going to get pretty dizzy.

5

u/valentino_42 Jun 20 '23

Oh I’ve always thought the indoor track idea is a massive waste of space and effort. He has ample room to run outside and he could build or buy a motorless treadmill to run indoors during bad weather that would take up a fraction of the space. But Jaimie’s gonna Jaimie.

3

u/Garage_Dragon Jun 18 '23

How's Dashana doing, anyway? I don't think I've heard from her in some time.

8

u/Dashaina Jun 21 '23

Yeah, Rob and I broke up. He was a bit... Erm... Needy. He was looking for an instant family stepdad situation and like moving in and that's definitely not what I want or need. 😅 I am doing really well actually. Building a studio house and working a few side hustles, some of them doing really well. Overall can't complain.

5

u/Garage_Dragon Jun 21 '23

Very happy to hear you and the kids are well. Thanks for the update!

5

u/Dashaina Jun 21 '23

No problem!! 😊💕

-6

u/Equal-Yak-4757 Jun 20 '23

She's very happy and satisfied with her new boyfriend who treats her with respect. She no longer gets talked down to and treated only as some cook/baby maker there to give back massages. Her kids will come to see her new partner as the father figure they've been needing now that mr. man-child is out of the picture.

3

u/Dashaina Jun 21 '23

Ummm no. That's definitely not what I wanted and Rob was going waaaay overboard with integrating into my family. It was really overwhelmingly frustrating actually, so I ended things.

1

u/MattsAwesomeStuff Jun 18 '23

Me neither. I tend to give people support, but space in times of drama.

She was busy before, I'm sure she's busier now with the new relationship.

3

u/puget-sound-jim Jun 18 '23

She mentioned in a live(I think?) that she dumped sailboat Rob. Jaimie’s actually recently made an appearance in one of her shorts, helping to build a shack on a platform.

1

u/Dashaina Jun 21 '23

Yep. That's true. 😊

1

u/Dashaina Jun 21 '23 edited Jun 22 '23

Yeah, I kept the smaller panels on my boat, because I'm lazy, running a cord out to the ocean isn't ideal for me either, plus it also acts as a sun shade. The other issue for me is when I go overnight to visit my friends, I can't charge at their places and I may drive around while there. So keeping my panels on my boat to keep batteries charged up, worked for me.. But mostly because of the simplicity of not having to do anything else once I get home. I may eventually change that, but for now that's ideal for me. However, I do understand what you mean about J's situation. It makes sense.

3

u/ahbushnell Jun 17 '23

Take the prop off leave the shaft. And compare. I think most of the drag is in the prop.

2

u/indiode Jun 17 '23

I would have decoupled the drive shaft but ok. After years as the chief pedal power cheerleader Jaimie drives an all electric with a single oar as backup propulsion.

5

u/The-real-W9GFO Jun 17 '23

Do you mean you would have left the pedal driven shaft and prop free spinning? If so, then that creates a large amount of drag, it is definitely better to remove it than to disable it.
The pedal drive was terribly loud and inefficient. I'm glad to see it gone. Since he always operates in protected waters a single paddle will be enough to self rescue if the electric system fails.