How this whole project got started was that I had an old ElecTrak frame.
I knew a guy who had a bunch of Electrak parts for sale and he wanted to clean out his barn, so I bought ALL his Electrak stuff off of him. As part of that, there was a junk tractor frame. I really didn't want it, as it was junk - no motor, no seat, missing parts left and right - but he insisted and threw it in at no cost.
So, I had this thing sitting in my back yard.
There's a local event, billed as The World's Greatest Junk Parade. People really do just put together junk and parade it from one town and down the main street of the next. I thought this could be a great project - to fix up the tractor and enter it in the parade.
I still had the old motor and controller from my Electro-Metro project in storage (the old unibody frame gave out, and I decommissioned the car a while back.)
So, in theory, I could build an overpowered lawn tractor for minimal expense. I already had a huge motor and controller. I'd only need to pay for some chain and sprockets to connect the motor to the transmission.
The first thing I would have to figure out is just WHERE to put the motor! It's HUGE and does NOT fit under the tractor the way the stock motor would have.
After a bit of fooling around, I decided that under the back seat would be the best place for the motor.
I decided I'd use a jack shaft to transfer the power over from the motor sprocket down to the transmission input.
Once I actually got the motor in the tractor, I spun up the motor with just jumper cables and a 12V battery. This at least let me test it out and see that the motor spun the right direction, etc.
After that, it was a matter of installing the jack shaft, replacing the pulley on the transmission with a sprocket, and making room in front for the battery and controller.
Next, I put together a battery pack of 6 Nissan Leaf cell modules and dusted off the old Open Revolt motor controller. I put it all together and spun the motor with the controller.
After that, it was a bunch of work to install the battery and motor controller in the tractor. I have video of that, which I haven't edited yet. I also needed to build a foot pedal to connect to the throttle. This tractor originally had a hand throttle, but the micro-switches and contactors that were controlled by it were shot.
I also needed to build a wheelie bar. I knew that this thing was going to be just dangerous enough to demand some sort of contraption on the end to keep it from standing up. Fortunately, my brother stopped over and helped me with the cutting and welding. (Again, I have video I haven't edited yet.)
With the foot pedal, the wheelie bar, and some testing, I was ready to try the tractor.
Here's the first wheelie test.
Frankly, I was a little disappointed. It felt plenty safe and solid, but the wheelie bar was designed on just an estimate. I ground down the welds, lifted the front of the tractor into the air with my engine hoist, and then re-welded the wheelie bar so that the front of the tractor would really catch some air.
The finished wheelie bar is also sized so as to hold a case of beer. That's mostly so I can say "Here, hold my beer" to the tractor before I do something stupid on it.
And that brings us back to doing a wheelie on a lawn tractor with the front wheels 16 inches off the ground. Anything higher would start to get pretty scary, especially seeing how the tractor doesn't even have a seat on it....
That's it for now. I'll add some more videos as I get them edited.
Stay charged up,
-Ben