I'm one step ahead of Gunner. I'm calling my work on the new 30 year old gas forklift complete. At least until it breaks down.
Now I'm back to my old reliable Big Joe electric. It has a frustrating problem that's getting worse. When there's a heavy load on it, the truck won't move when in 1rst gear. Then when it hits second gear it jumps like my kid peeling out from a stop light with his 500 hp Mustang. Makes it very hard to set one bin of fruit exactly on top of another.
The speeds are done by bringing in three solenoids (1,2,3 gear) to different taps on a power resistor. The drive motor sees a higher voltage for a higher gear. It looks like it may be possible to unbolt the taps and move them on the power resistor. Anyone tried something like this?
That power resistor gets HOT. Lots of wasted energy. That got me to thinking, do newer forklifts use some kind of power transistor speed control that could be retrofitted to this unit?