Amp draw?

[Kubota_Man]

How do I find out how many amps my tractor draws just running with out lights or anything else on my BX24D?

 

[North Idaho Wolfman]

You need an inductive or shunted amp test meter, Fluke makes them.
But more importantly why? Are you killing the battery with lights or are you just worried it's not charging?

 

[Kubota_Man]

Are you killing the battery with lights or are you just worried it's not charging?

Nope just want to light up the world now that winter is coming and quite a bit of my seat time may be in the dark doing snow removal. Seams how you live close to me KREM 2 has eluded to it being a snow filled winter.

 

[North Idaho Wolfman]

Yea I bought my B7100 soon to be upgrade to an L3450 and a 60" snow blower for just such an occasion.
Even working on a snow pusher for the loader on the B and a dozer snow blade for the L.
I too think we are going to get nailed with lots of snow this winter!

 

[lsmurphy]

Taking a completely unscientific approach.......

10 minutes into your run time your battery should be charged, replenished.

I assume you are running a 40 amp alt?

Your only real consumption will be glow plugs and starter at startup.

Your accessories, hour meter, temp gauge, oil pressure gauge......etc........negligible.



Particularly if you use LEDs..........light'em up and don't worry about it.

 

[Kubota_Man]

Yes it has a 40 amp alternator. So if I understand you correctly I should be able to have 20-25ish amps available for extra lighting......

 

[lsmurphy]

Yes it has a 40 amp alternator. So if I understand you correctly I should be able to have 20-25ish amps available for extra lighting......

You're good to go.

 

[cabu]

What you could do:

Get a Resistor of 0.01 Ohm.
Place it inbetween the cable you want to check.
Use a multimeter and meassure over (parallel) the resistor.
You will expect less than 1 Volt DC.

The math is here: 1Amp ~ 0.01Volt

So if you have a load of 40Amps the Voltage over the Resistor is 0.40Volt.

The Amps and Volts will heat up the Resistor by their product:
40A x 0.4V = 16Watt or only 1.6W with 4A

If you can't find a 0.01Ohm resistor, the math is like this:

Volts = Amps x Ohms or Amps = Volts / Ohms

Remember that the Volts are also the value the Voltage drops for the devices behind. So if the resistor ist to high, you loose a lot of Voltage and the Resistor gets hot (Watts = Volts x Amps).

You can built your own Resistor with a copperwire.
12 AWG = 0,00159786 Ohm/feet
10 AWG = 0,00100386 Ohm/feet
8 AWG = 0,00063261 Ohm/feet

Have fun.

carl

 

[85Hokie]

I am with Murph, got em? Light em UP!!
I just hooked up ANOTHER set to my ROPS, 2 facing towards the rear, 2 facing front.LED 4" x 4" lights - Bright with key off, same bright with at idle....I expect no problems. Total amp draw is approx 8 amps. I would get LED, even a halogen light produces heat, lots of amps being used as heat.

bought these and placed then up this past weekend, very pleased - and unless some branch whacks the shhhettt out of them, they should last a loong time!

http://www.amazon.com/Tuff-LED-Ligh...1382530239&sr=8-9&keywords=LED+offroad+lights