(ET) E15 has the motor back in.

[Christopher Zach <cz alembic crystel com>]

Busy day. Today I decided to wrap up the E15 project for the winter as 
it's starting to get colder and I really needed to finish stabilizing 
the frame for being out in the winter.

So I wire-brushed off all the rust from the front, applied a coat of 
POR15, then applied two coats of the wrong color and one coat of the 
right color. I re-painted the rear of the tractor to match the front and 
now it looks pretty good actually.

Also painted the welds and angle iron in the rear for the winter. And in 
a moment of optimism I re-installed the E15's motor. Granted it's 
nowhere near hooked up, but at least the motor is not taking up floor 
space in the shed.

Next step? Gather the parts over the winter and plan out how I am going 
to re-attach card 1, re-connect the speed control, and possibly build a 
front mount for the resistor assembly since the transformer top metal is 
missing. Oh well.

The transformer is mounted on a sheet of rotted wood, the rectifier 
diodes are broken, and I have no idea if the transformer would explode 
if I plugged it in. So I might make this tractor not have a charger 
on-board. This is not an insurmountable problem as I do still have the 
solar charge control and panels so it could be a pure solar system. Plus 
I could build a jumper cable between this tractor and the E20, then roll 
them together head to head and use the E20's charger.

This would also give me a lot more room in the front for more NiCD 
batteries. Since I don't have a back box right now the front is it. I 
might be able to put 60 BB600's up front, then 60 more in the rear 
giving this tractor 120ah of capacity.

I also should buy at least one new front side panel over the winter and 
see how it looks. The current ones are rusted, and although I could weld 
the right side one, the left looks pretty sad.

Never dull.

Chris