(ET) New

[John <etrak jvlnet com>]

Hi all; I have just subscribed to the list and am very happy to be a
part of it. I moved to my present residence late last year (company
transfer) and with the honey do list you can imagine that the computer
took the back seat for a while. When I was younger my father owned an
E-15 Elec-Trak and as a normal kid at the time I spent many enjoyable
hours trying to impress my friends and relatives with my driving
skills,although they seemed more interested in the tractor itself rather
than my operating skills. Well as time would have it the tractor was
sold and I moved on to a career, wife, kids, dog, house -- you get the
idea.
          A couple years back in a different state I ran across a
gentleman that had an E-15 sitting in his storage shed that was in need
of some tlc and batteries. Over a period of a few months we came to
terms and I purchased the unit with attachments for a fair price.
          As my job had me on the move every couple years the Elec-Trak
was never used and sat in storage in different locations. Now my
position is permanent ;-) and I decided to resurrect the old beast, my
first thoughts were to completely disassemble it and do a complete
restoration so I got started one rainy Saturday. At lunch my wife in her
usual logical way said "where can you get the parts you will need for
something that old", well I just sat there kind of dumb founded and
realizing I hadn't thought of that. So on Monday I sat about the task of
trying to find some one who could help me out with this.
          I decided to go right to the horses mouth and so called GE,
they gave me two numbers to call one in Kansas - I don't  recall the
name - nice person but he didn't have much for parts and didn't seem to
know much about my particular machine, and the other one was almost in
my back yard - Technical Service in Wisconsin ( I live less than thirty
miles away). I called this person and was impressed with his knowledge
of these machines both from a parts stand point and the actual workings.
Well he told me to put together a list of the parts that I needed and
call him back and he would be glad to help me out. About two weeks went
by and I decided to drive up and talk on a personal level which in
hindsight was the smartest thing I have done since starting this
project. I could not believe the amount of parts (new) and machines he
had, one building was half full of new parts and the other had parts,
attachments, tractors etc. Well we started to talk and he questioned me
on the level of restoration that I was doing and I told him complete, he
brought out some pictures of tractors in different levels of restoration
that he had completed and they were beautiful. One machine was crated
and being shipped to someone in NY. and I would have loved to seen it
but there was plastic covering the tractor and Bill didn't want to
remove it, which I don't blame him for.
            Well I got down to the parts I needed (half a trunk full)
and I asked if I could bring the tractor up to him when I got the
batteries in it so he could check my wiring job. He asked if I had wired
it  as original and I told him my documentation wasn't well thought out
in that area and some of the diagrams in the book were kind of hard to
read (no old guy jokes here). He went and copied full size "D" prints of
the complete wiring and only charged me about $5.00 for each sheet ( I
built a house a few years ago and the architect charged me $20.00 for
smaller prints). All the time we were talking he was interupted with
service calls about ten times and I asked how he was paid for them, he
told me the service was free. Now I am in the service business and  know
how much service and support cost and explained that no one offers tech
support for free on a thirty year old piece of equipment but he said
that a lot of the owners are original and many are elderly on a fixed
income and most calls don't require a lot of time anyway.
            One thing that I asked was if he would ever have a web site
but his answer was no probably not because of the large amount of time
invloved, so guys maybe we should make a sight exclusively for the
Elec-Trak maintain it and use him for info. He has filing cabinets full
of documentation and blueprints in the thousands and while I was there
he gave me a short history of the tractors from GE, New Idea, WheelHorse
to him. I would hate to see this info some day go to the scrap yard.
Well enough for today I just thought you might be interested in someone
else's project, thanks for the time - John.