(ET) E15 moved out of weeds under power

[Chris Zach <cz alembic crystel com>]

So I was given this totally rusted junker E15 last fall. The wires had 
been cut, the tractor was a wreck, the rear of the frame was rusted, and 
all that. But it had a good mower deck, so I restored that to operation.

The rest of it... Sat in the weeds. On a lark I tried welding angle-iron 
to the frame with my E20's welder and oddly enough the welds seemed to 
stick and the transmission managed to mount up to it well enough. 
However the control board was shot, wires were cut, etc.

So over the winter and spring I worked on it. Ground off what was left 
of the rear battery box/parts, and PORed and painted the frame. Washed 
it off as much as I could, cleaned up what was left of the wiring, and 
took the board in to be looked at.

I took all of the diodes off the board and installed new ones. That's 
about 15 or 16 diodes, somewhat of a pain. But the board looked to do 
things on the bench, so I connected up a 15 pin molex with pigtails to 
it and let it be.

This spring I worked on the tractor. Reconnected wires, reconnected all 
sorts of stuff, etc. Yesterday I wired a molex 15 pin female into the 
harness, I think I got all the wires right and re-numbered them.

Today I put 3 old 12v Hawkers on the back, hooked it up with a 100a fuse 
in case it exploded, and tried it. No voltage. Found that the fuse 
*holder* for the controls was bad. I think I need a whole new holder, 
but in the meantime I just put the #30 wire in the clip itself with the 
fuse. What the heck.

Did that and the voltage came up. Tried the throttle, barely any motor 
movement in forward, power in reverse. Looked at the reversing relay, 
sparks arcing on the contacts. Said "screw it" and got one of my new 36v 
relays. Need to figure out how to mount it, but it's on there now. Tried 
tractor.

It *moves*. Goes into first speed, then second and third. Neat how it 
smoothly does the delay, which means the caps and SCRs are still 
working. Can't try the brake because it's rusted, but I put it in L and 
drove it out of the weeds and dirt up to the house.

It has no charger, so I built a quick accessory-accessory extension cord 
and have it charging next to the E20. That should bring the pack up to full.

Now what? Well I have to mount all the cards, fix the card with the 
resistors (it's not connected right now, oh well), drill out the broken 
screws for the control panel, figure out how to mount the relay, and so 
forth. Then I need to decide if I want to actually keep it (and get a 
new back box+fenders+seat, charger metal chassis for the resistors which 
are hanging over the side, etc etc etc) or drive it to the dump.

Still, it does move.

And I need to think about the tires, they're shot; do I really want to 
buy new ones? Will they laugh at the rusted rims? Probably. Maybe I 
could fill them with that self-sealing crud and run them till they 
explode or something.

Still, it does move.

And it has no lift, charger, or batteries. Although I could wire up 30 
BB600's in the front of it and get it going.

And yes, it does move.

Chris