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I have finally been successful in the
installation of the Alltrax controller in my
E-20 tractor. This has been a long process
which involved a few replacement units from
Alltrax, and I want to share my results with
others who may be contemplating upgrading
ET?s. The first 2 units that I installed were
seemingly bad units and caused me to spend a
considerable amount of time in troubleshooting
my tractor. This could be a long story, but I
will condense it to what I discovered on my
particular tractor. The first couple of units
gave me an over voltage alarm, which made no
sense to me or to Alltrax themselves. The first
units ended up smoking on me and were replaced
by Alltrax, no questions asked. Alltrax also
replaced a 3rd and 4th unit after I sent them a
diagram as to how I had my unit wired up. In
the process of testing the 3rd and 4th units, I
noticed that the main drive motor was making a
loud noise and then the alltrax would fail. I
pulled the motor and on a bench test it appeared
to be working, but very sluggish. I then paid
for a 5th unit from alltrax and spent the better
half of this last holiday weekend re-checking
all my wiring end-to-end. I discovered that
when I checked continuity from the field motor
connections F1 & F2 back to the controller leads
they seemed to be fine. I then took it one step
farther and actually disconnected the J6
connectors and retested for continuity. It was
then that I discovered that the connector output
lead for pin # 36 had 2 wires coming out of it,
even though the input side only had 1 wire. I
made the mistake of connecting both leads from
this pin out source to the F1 & F2 field
connections on the controller unit. Which now
made sense that continuity looked good from the
controller to the motor, albeit on the same
lead. I made the correct wiring change for the
# 62 pin and then ran that to the F connector on the controller unit.
Anxiety was killing me at this point, as I was
prepared to give this tractor up for a parts
machine if I experienced another failed unit. I
have a second, previously converted tractor,
that I used to connect its controller to my E-20
motors connections to verify that the main drive
motor still functioned. This did work and the
motor did indeed move, but sounded loud. I then
took the plunge and connected the new controller
unit back to the motor and fired it up. No over
voltage this time, but was getting a 1 red led
function, i.e. Throttle position sensor
error. I quickly found that the wire in the
Alltrax wiring connector was not making and had
to play around with it to ensure that all the
leads were functional. Tried power again and
Yeah ? I now had a solid green led and things
look normal. The controller is functioning and
the drive motor does turn, but it seems to be
lacking power, even with the curtis switch all
the way down. Someone on this list mentioned in
the past that a lack of power can be caused by
the field windings being degraded. I wonder if
anyone else has dealt with this kind of
thing. Can these GE motors easily be rewound at a shop?
I do apologize for the length of this message,
but if I can prevent others from experiencing
the same difficulties that I have endured it is worth posting.
Thanks,
Bob K
Robert Kleinbrahm
Senior Network Engineer
First Republic Bank
111 Pine St. 5th flr.
San Francisco, CA. 94111
(415) 288-1478
rkleinbrahm firstrepublic com
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