(ET) It's almost done (and other famous last words)

[D Howell <dervatl yahoo com>]

It's been about 6 weeks now that the elderly I-5 has
been torn apart, stipped, POR-15'ed, painted, and
reassembled.  I still haven't put the hood on or the
seat, but the main parts are all there.  I reinstalled
the batterys today, using the new plastic liners I got
from Bill.  I'm not sure how good my batterys are
going be since I got them in a poor state of charge
and I'm sure they were that way for a long time.  I
charged them while they were out using a golf cart
charger.  I guess time will tell.  

The electronics seem to be in good shape.  I took it
for a spin around the house and down the street for a
bit.  Cruise control works great as does everything
else electric.  (That's a good thing, especially on
this tractor!)  The only casualty was the wires going
to my headlights.  One side was touching those big
bands that heat up above the charger.  Melted them
together.  I knew something was up when my dash light
came on whenever I pressed the throtttle.  I fixed the
problem, but now my headlights don't come on although
the dash light does.  Maybe the bulbs blew.

While the tractor was torn down, I adjusted the brake.
 The adjustment seemed to work.  It stops fairly well
now.  When I first brought it home and rolled it off
the trailor, it was an exciting moment to push the
brake and nothing happens.  

After the initial tear down, I made a list of parts
and sent an order to Bill.  I bought about $124.00
worth of parts.  A major part of that order was the
diode assembly and the capacitor.  I knew the charger
didn't work when I bought it.  Looking at it I noticed
right away the capacitor had blown off the top.  So, I
ordered everything I thought might be wrong with it to
get in back working.  The bad news is that subsequent
testing (with the new parts installed) has shown that
the transformer is bad too.  I found one locally here
for $30 although I'm not sure when the guy is going to
actually locate it.  He's retired and gone back to
school, but is in the "finals" mode.  Said he'd call
me when he had time to look for it.

In the meantime, I'm going to try and use my golf cart
charger.  This brings me to a most important question.
 I'm going to hook this charger up externally to the
batterys.  Which batterys do I hook to?  Without
knowing the internal wiring, I'm a bit hesitant to
just hunt the right voltage and start charging.  My
intial testing shows 37 volts between the negative on
B-5 and the positive on B-2.  Is that the correct
hookup for an external charger?  I seem to get the
same voltage between these two terminals regardless of
whether or not the disconnect switch is engaged or
not.  Would this make sense?

Thanks for any replys.  I really appreciate all the
help the board has given me already.

Darryl Howell
Smyrna GA