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Old 08-17-11, 08:16 AM   #31
d3vi1d06
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you motivated me to start my riding mower project. im sick of mowing my half acre with a push mower. it takes me 2 days to do. its arduous labor in the heat of summer, and im using a cordless 48v 20" ryobi push mower. 1 charge lasts half the yard, or 1 hour... charging takes 12 hours...

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Old 08-17-11, 05:59 PM   #32
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d3vi1d06 glad to here your going to make your own riding mower, I hope you start a thread on it so we can all see how and what your doing, good stuff.
Remember we like pictures.
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Old 08-17-11, 07:49 PM   #33
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its gonna take a while, most likely next season. i have to get my wife on the DIY train. she thinks paying more for a finished product is ideal.
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Old 08-29-11, 06:51 PM   #34
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Tested the motor in my electric riding mower conversion today, the motor which I bought used in Las Vegas in January spun up just fine. Just have to get and mount the batteries and put in a foot pedal for the slider speed control. Hope to be ready for next spring.
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Old 08-29-11, 06:59 PM   #35
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Good stuff keep us posted, maybe you could start your own thread on your conversion.
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Old 07-06-12, 09:21 PM   #36
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Update

It's been a while so I figured I better post an update, this is what I did on
Apr 29/12

Today I drove ET2 down to my neighbors pulling a trailer with a 10" Plow and a set of Discs in it.
He has a garden about 30ft x 100ft, he has plowed it with his farm tractor once about 3 to 4 weeks ago.
First thing I did was to pull the discs over it to smooth it out a bit, it was full of ruts.
Next I hooked up the 10" Brinly and tried plowing, the soil was dry and soft, my rear tires are turfs, loaded plus 25lb weights each side, I had good traction, some slippage but not much. This is the 2nd time I tried plowing and the 1st time I got it to work, plowed all of it.
I tried different settings trying to figure out what does what and to learn as much as I could.
Next I put the Discs on and ran it over the whole garden, smoothed it out.
After I was all done I loaded up the trailer and pulled it back to my place.

Tractor ran about 2 hrs total, 1-1/2hrs+ pulling the plow and the discs. Pulling the plow takes everything it's got, most of it was done in 3rd gear, 2nd gear it goes a little slower but the motor spins faster.
Pulling the disc is much easier, can use 4th gear no problem.
I let the Batteries sit for a while, then checked voltage to see how much charge I used.
Batteries are down to 30% charge, 70% charge was used today, they were full charge at the start.

All in all I'm a happy, ET2 works for plowing plus I learned something about the tractor and plowing today.



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Old 01-05-14, 08:47 AM   #37
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Still have ET2 and it's still working, Dec 2013.

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Old 01-05-14, 09:08 AM   #38
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Looks like its working great. That is good to near. Thanks for posting the videos. I missed the garden ones from before somehow.
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Old 01-05-14, 10:54 AM   #39
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That's amazing! It's so cold up there, did you have to warm up the battery bank?
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Old 01-21-14, 04:22 PM   #40
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Doug,
Great job!
This summer I'm restoring a GE Elec-Trak ( I have several).
Here's a tip: Since you don't have to reverse the motor the electronics for the controller become much simpler. For instance, you don't need an 'H' bridge controller which saves 3/4 of the power MOSFETs.
I'm designing my own controller to update the electrics for my Elec-Trak using a similar method.

Again, nice work!

Rob

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