(ET) Elec-traks arrived in Germany

["Markus" <ev lorch net>]

Hi all,

just a note to let you guys know that my two E20s and attachments
arrived safely in Germany.

Yesterday, we unloaded them after 4 weeks in the container. The are 
mostly unharmed, a few scratches here and there but all in all in
good condition. I hooked up the batteries and fired them right
up. 
Today I put them to the test. We had some 2 foot high grass in the 
meadows around the house and I wanted to mow the corners and places
where the big tractors can't easily get to (under trees etc.) I put
my older beat-up mowing deck on and cut in the highest position and LL, 
I had to mow twice but it did a pretty good job for the height of
the grass and there was plenty of juice left in the old (free) batteries
to mow about 1/2 acre ... prob. for more but I didn't want to push it.
Then I took the other tractor and gave it a nice finish cut with my
"good" mowing deck. 

You may remember that I had "sealed" the batteries for the transport.
I had used hot-glue to close the vents temporarily and also put some 
old rags on top of the batteries to soak up possible spills. The plan
worked nicely. Some of the batteries had a traces of acid on them but
none of them has lost a noticible amount of water/acid. I opened the
vents before I put them on a charge (using european versions of the 
7/14Amp Soneil chargers). The hot-glue came off the battery vents with
no problem. Two cells of different batteries had built up some pressure.
I wonder why. There was no charging activity whatsoever ... maybe it was
due to heat in the container?

One of these days I am going to drive them to our local tractor and farm
equipment dealer. I know those guys well and they are anxious to take
a look at them.

Well, so much from Germany - if you know of hear of other Elec-traks in
Europe please let me know ..

Markus