I've recently taken delivery of a combined volt/amp meter and have wired it into my Sherman. Here are some of the readings.
The quiescent current is around 250mA.
Normal forward and reverse running at maximum speed is around 15A,
As a stall test, I parked the tank with the tailplate against our decking, stood on the hull and put her in full reverse. The current drain peaked at 70A, with both tracks turning at speed and slowly eating their way through the lawn !
Switching on the smoke unit (standard Armortek model) added around 2.5A to the quiescent current but I would expect that to drop as the element reached its working temperature.
Adrian.
Power Consumption
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Adrian Harris
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Patrick O'Donnell
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Adrian Harris
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It was gently positioned in contact with the deck before full power was applied. No video I'm afraid but here's the deck and lawn damage...
I must admit that although I've seen videos of people successfully riding their models I've yet to manage to stay on mine for more than a couple of seconds once it starts moving !
The meter came from Ebay and is a WU100 "Watts Up" from RC Electronics. Their URL is
http://www.rc-electronics-usa.com/motor ... meter.html
It does Amp hours as well as just amps and volts so in theory should be able to tell you how long you have left in a battery but as far as I can tell, it needs to be powered up all the time to store the readings, so that makes it a little problematic for intermittant use.
Adrian.
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Patrick O'Donnell
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Allan Richards
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Adrian,
Some very useful data there. It would be the average current drawn over time that would derermine what duration one would get from the batteries. I have 20 A/h batteries in my Tiger which is heavier than the Sherman. On a normal run over reasonable terrain it gives about a 11/4 hours run however I am very gentle on the power. This would infer an avaerage current of 16 amps, which seems quite heavy, but my theory is that a 20 A/h battery will last 20 hours at 1 amp discharge but not 1 hour at 20 amps discharge.
Some very useful data there. It would be the average current drawn over time that would derermine what duration one would get from the batteries. I have 20 A/h batteries in my Tiger which is heavier than the Sherman. On a normal run over reasonable terrain it gives about a 11/4 hours run however I am very gentle on the power. This would infer an avaerage current of 16 amps, which seems quite heavy, but my theory is that a 20 A/h battery will last 20 hours at 1 amp discharge but not 1 hour at 20 amps discharge.
Allan Richards
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Mike Gormley
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