OK.. wow this is a learning curve! But that's good

Have been playing with circuits.. still not used to the maths, but it's all simple really just a bit of a shock after years of not doing any...

It turns out that bumping-up the voltage from 24v to anything between 24 and 72v is really rather easy. People have been talking about discharging huge capacitors which I guess is good for weaponry,. but for overvolting motors off the max allowed battery cells in series something far less "OH F**K"-ish is required.

I bought a 555 noise circuit from maplin, which ends in a Transistor.. that all creates a square wave in your main supply (ie, oscillating) which because it's oscillating can be transformed up by the usual means,. Or a lighter version simply charges a series of 24v capacitors (smallish ones) in turn and then discharges them in series. An inductor is required to drive the circuit and to pull current from the batteries, but it's not as big as a toroid transformer if you don't want the weight. A bridge rectifier, and various capacitor/inductor combos can be used for a smooth result.

Job Done.

I am playing with using the same toroid core for both inductors, because some of the feedback and amplification effects are really interesting albeit over my head at the moment.

This may be very naive of be, but I'm gonna look at using motors as the inductor or even transformer in circuits too.. that way, there's little added weight.