Dashing about.

It rained off and on today, so I took the opportunity to work in the shelter of the garage and re-mount the dashboard. I tidied up the wiring, and moved the main power switch to the dash. Much easier to turn it on and off now, safer too. I put a little dome LED on the dash too, but it needs 12v to operate, I think. The leads on the controller aren't putting out enough to turn it on. It does work, I tried it with a 12v battery, and I got it cheap so I don't mind so much. I'll find a 2v one sometime to replace it.


I put the control wires into a loom and ran them through the frame to hide them and protect them. Looks cleaner.


I finished painting the good fender, but I didn't have my camera with me, so no picture yet.

Fend for yourself.

With the tractor's mechanical bits in good order, I need to take car of the more cosmetic parts. Since the fenders also hold up the far sides of the floor pans, I'll do them first.

This is the right hand fender.



Mostly intact, but the sides where the spot welds were are in rough shape.


Cleaned up, did a short weld to hold the support in the sheet metal on the right.


Cleaned out and filled the cracks and holes on the side with some bondo.



Filled in one little crack on a spot weld.


Primed.


First coat.


This is the left hand fender. It's in much worse shape.


Someone backed the tractor into something.




I tried to fix it, but it was for nothing.


The bottom was just too rough and too rusted. The sheet metal is basically useless.


But at least I was able to save the angle iron parts. It's pretty rust-pitted too, but it will work for now.


I'll try to find a replacement fender for the left hand side. If I can't find one used, I'll try to get a reproduction fender from a restoration place, though that would be expensive.

If all else fails I'll take it to someone who can do body work to cut off the cancerous bits and MIG on some new sheet metal. I can at least pound it back into shape if need be, but I can't weld sheet metal to save my life.

Road test.

I took this video a few days ago, but I forgot to post it here. Witness the mighty belt squealing.

I get a charge out of you.

I figured it would be a good idea to prep the charger, since I'm going to be spending a few days playing around with this thing. I took the cover off to make sure the dip switches were set for the right kind of battery.


Man that's a big transformer. No wonder that thing is so heavy.

Sits on top of the hood for the time being.


Registering plenty of voltage as it charged the bank. Excellent.


I was driving it on the road today and got it up to probably its full speed. It's pretty damn fast, I'm surprised. Also, my neighbour came back at just the right time, he hasn't seen it in months since I had him come over and help me with the old steering u-joint's friction pins. He seemed pretty impressed.

Big day.

I bought a 25k potentiometer this afternoon. I received a brilliant suggestion from a gent on a forum I frequent for my throttle issue. The throttle control lever on the steering column only has 90' of rotation, but I need 0-5k range of resistance to give me the full range of power from the controller. Since 90' range of motion potentiometers are hard to find / don't exist, he suggested I just get one with a higher range and use less of it. Perfection. I built this throttle body out of piece of stainless my friend gave me, it used to be a stand for a milk frother. Thanks Tony!

A bit of leftover copper pipe and 2 holes for cotter pins = ghetto universal joint.


Then something more interesting happened.

How did this get here?



Looks pretty at home in the garage next to my sister's car.


Sorry the pictures are kind of dark. Not sure why.

So, less than 4 months since I bought the thing. Not bad for the first drive. The tensioner worked pretty well, I had to re-tighten it after the first drive to the front yard, but then it was fine for the 15 minutes I spent messing around.

Fourth gear is much faster than I thought it was going to be. My dad drove it too and estimated it to be around 30kph. I don't even think that was the top speed, the driveway is 300 feet long, and it kept accelerating for the whole length. I might try it on the road tomorrow to see if I can get it going faster. It gets kinda scary actually, considering there's a fair bit of play in the steering.

Regardless, I am really, really happy right now.

Getting close.

Busy busy day today.

Now that all the holes have been drilled I painted the frame.


Finished painting all the brackets.


Went to town, bought some more corks, and this high-density foam rubber weatherstripping. This is very dense stuff, the batteries float pretty well on it and don't bottom out. Self adhesive.


I also plugged the holes in the bottom of the axle bell housings with the new corks, and refilled the differential with 4 gallons of fresh gear oil. No picture of that, since funnels aren't very photogenic. I also built my new grease gun and filled all grease fittings.

Reassembled the tensioner, greased the sliding bits.


Wrapped the motor in fibreglass window screening material to keep the bugs out. This isn't permanent, it's just there until I figure out the best way to build an enclosure for it. Put all the driveshaft parts back in, mounted the keystocks, aligned the tensioner and tightened it up. I also had to cut a shim out of some sheet metal to get the motor mount to line up better.


Batteries in, bolted down. The nuts are insanely hard to turn, I don't really know why. This will make it tough to steal, if nothing else.


Then I started wiring this thing. First up, build the control system.


Bridge the battery terminals in series.


Then it was too dark and there were aphids everywhere, so I called it a day.