Battery Vehicle Society

I was gifted one of these.


Made one of these to match.


Added one of these.


Mock up.


Remade one of these.


Got these gifted from an EV friend in the States.


Turned these...


Into these.


Made one of these


To fit like this.


And like this.


To give this.


Then found these.


And made these.


And these.


And we have this.




Had to do this.



So that this could happen.


And this.


A quick chassis upgrade.


Made these.



To get this.


And then made this.


Got one of these.



And was gifted four of these.


Made some more of this.


Pulls little wheelies with 12v!


Proper test.


It moves so it needs these.


Made this.


For here.


Then this bit.


Because straight roads are boring.



As are flat ones.


Looks a little like this now.


But Optimas live like this.


Can you manage 12"? Nah, but the MR2 can!


Just added a seat mounting.


This whole project has been made from gifts, dirt cheap Ebay finds and raiding the scrap metal yard on the way to work.

Many thanks to Steve, Simon and Jim for their gifts, support and advice.

To be continued.....

Brilliant!

Good project - and a great write up!

Any vids of you driving?

Thank you, the write up is rubbish really, no real information. However, if a picture is worth a thousand words.....

There is a full write up here. http://www.diyelectriccar.com/forums/showthread.php/woodys-tractor-project-39910.html

I've not driven it yet, no seat (that one is temporary) or controls fitted. And it is on a basement workshop so no space to go anywhere until it is rebuilt outside. Then I will try and get soemone to video it.

I am planning on using a fiddle brake system on it. Right foot throttle and service brakes, left foot steering brakes. I have to get the seat sorted before I can work out the ergonomics of the controls. I might continue to use the slider pot (in the vid) for a throttle (why is it still called a throttle? It might as well be a 'gas' pedal for all the relevence!) as it works and is there.

The plan is to make it work and clothe it in a wooden body and seat to show off my cabinet making skills.

That really is one class bit of kit

Some lovely metal work there, and an cool use of a Club Car motor as well

Cant wait for the finished project.

ChrisB

Cheers Chris.

I was thinking of mounting the controller upside down under the seat.
Do you think cooling will be an issue?

Really depends how hard you expect to work it ??

My fiesta controller had no cooling what so ever and was mounted inside the car, which was fine around my area as its very flat, but Alan who bought the vehicle from me found he had to mount it under the bonnet on a large lump of allly as its quite hilly around him and had too work it quite hard.

ChrisB

How hard it works depends on how much fun I want to have pulling trees and ploughing snow!

I have no lawn to mow and no garden big enough to use it on. As one of the Yanks said on the other site, I am crazy enough to build a yard tractor from scratch and not have a yard!

I suppose it could be the luxury of a seat heater for next winter's snow ploughing.

Give it a go and see what happens, curtis units are pretty bomb proof when it comes to temps and will generally shut themselves down if they start to warm up.

ChrisB

That's good to know.

I am going to mount the reversing contactors under the seat too, just ahead of the controller. That should keep all the cables nice and short.
Means I can use up cable scraps and save cutting into the longer lengths I have.

It seems like ages since I did any work on the tractor but after picking up a cast iron bath from Ebay and then doing some more building work on my house I decided it was time to get back to some real fun!

I faffed about with the controller for a while and then decided to move it from under the seat. I figured I wanted to have a gear shift and a parking brake and that would start taking up space under the seat to fit the linkages in place.

So the controller got a new home at the back of the steering box.
Having got it there I decided to start placing some of the high current cables. I removed the batteries for safety.
I figured that I should put the reversing contactor near the motor to reduce the number of cables being run so that now lives under the seat.

This is where the controller is.


Only two 35sqmm cables will run to the motor.


Those who know Curtis controllers will notice that one of the cables was in the wrong place so I moved it.


Here is the motor and reversing contactor.



Doing all that wiring meant I got to play with my cheap hydraulic crimper.


This is the result.

Those with a keen eye can see what is wrong with this picture.

I am using 35sqmm cable with 35-8 crimps.
The 35sqmm dies are only able to form a nice hexagon on the crimp it is so loose that the cable just slides out of it. It was so loose I was able to push the strands back in too.

I switched to using a 25sqmm die and crimped twice. First press was with the crimp turned 60deg and pressed about 90%. I then turned the crimp one flat and pressed it again fully.
I had to turn the crimp as the first one was left with large flat bits of flash where a bit of the crimp was squeezed out of the hex and between the flat parts of the die.

It is a pain to have to do this but it works.

I may try adding a dome head steel rivet inside the 35sqmm die so that it puts a dimple on one of the flats and see if that will work better.