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Re: (ET) E15 moves after 10 years?



Oh that will be fun to fix. I went to a Molex plug is it possible to remove the card at all?

On a related note, drove the E15 up to the shed and took a look at it. Weird: the 1A switch does seem to be closing, but power on pin 10 is not sending power to pin 11. Likewise if I jumper 10 to 11 there is no power on 14.

However if I jumper 4 to 11 I can hear a contactor click. Jumpering 4 to 14 causes one of the relays to click in but not the second contactor. Weird. And even weirder, jumpering 4 to 11 does not increase the tractor's motor speed indicating that 1a may be "closing" but it's not bypassing the first armature resistor.

Oi. Maybe I have the armature resistor wires on incorrectly, but they go to the proper lugs based on physical position. Hm.

Regardless I think I have to take card 1 out and put it on the bench to check the SCRs and such. If I recall the whole reason it was there was to have a capacitor charge before engaging the SCR to provide a bit of a "delay" in between speeds in case you ram it to full speed. I could just bypass that (jumpering 10-11 and 13-14) but that does not seem right...

C

On 10/26/2023 4:12 PM, Darryl McMahon wrote:
Took the contact cleaner out to my E15 (not Chris Zach's in the thread title) this afternoon.

Seems the previous owner had his own grievance with those card edge connections.  The connector is gone and each wire is soldered to the board.

The original glitch I thought I had fixed is back.  I think that's about the reed relay that had the broken tab and I thought I had resolved. Then I noticed the other relay doesn't seem to be changing state.

So, back to pondering what's up.  Cleaned contacts on the reed relays, but I think they've done their time, and I want to replace both the Field Weakening (FW) and Reverse (REV) relays.

I remember replacing a reed relay on the E12 years ago with an enclosed unit, and it has held up well.  I think it was this unit at the Electric Tractor Store. https://freerangeelectric.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1_8_14&products_id=147

Worst case, old relays get replaced with enclosed units; best case, glitch gets resolved and a bit of wiring gets cleaned up.

Darryl


On 2023-10-23 10:51 a.m., Darryl McMahon wrote:
Chris,

thanks for the suggestion. Much appreciated. I'll have a look at that in the next few days.

Darryl

On 2023-10-22 11:23 p.m., Chris Zach via Elec-trak wrote:
Hm. Could it be the edge connector on the big card 1? If the pins are dirty or loose the opening and closing of the front panel there could be allowing the tractor to work at random.

On my E15 I gave up on the long connector, cut the wires, and used a nice big molex plug with wires soldered right to the card. The card can come out if needed to fix, and the molex plug ensures a solid connection no matter what.

C

On 10/22/2023 8:50 PM, Darryl McMahon wrote:
I can't match that story, but I did bring an E15 back to operating condition today.

My E12 with plow and E15 with snowthrower both stopped working the same day back in late February dealing with the aftermath of what turned out to be the second last major snow storm of the season. (I did not enjoy the last storm of the season at all.)

Both died at the bottom of the driveway.  It's enough of a grade that it takes two hearty folks working hard to push them up to the garage for repairs.  It's been a busy few months since, and I only got seriously looking at getting back in operation for this coming winter (and with sub-freezing weather expected tonight, that could be coming any time now).  Anyway, I put the E15 in the garage that day, and it has stayed there until today.

When I had time over the past few months, I checked main connections and a couple of other things without success. I opened the back panel for the dash, and eventually found a centre tab on one of the reed relays (not the forward-reverse relay) had broken off embedded in the quick disconnect.  Fiddled with that and put the connectors on the other side of the 2-pole relay.  Success. Machine moved under its own power.  Took it down the driveway to tow the E12 up to the garage. Unpleasant day outside, so very disappointed when the E15 stopped operating again once it was positioned to tow the E12. Went back inside, changed to dry gear, and went out again to reopen the back panel again.  Everything looked fine, reseated all the connectors again on the reed relay, and figured I would see if anything had changed.  Worked fine. Closed things up again and towed the E12 to the garage and unhooked.  Went to move the E15 again, and no go.  Opened things up, all looks good, but relay doesn't seem to be opening and closing.  Try powering up, and it works.  Closed it up and moved it to the side so there's room to work on the E12.

I don't trust self-healing tractors, I'm worried this one will leave me stranded, and the open up and close again trick won't be any fun me in mid-winter, even if the E15 is having a good time at my expense.

All best,


On 2023-10-22 5:09 p.m., Chris Zach via Elec-trak wrote:
So my E15 burned down the BB600 pack of 30 cells about a decade ago and pretty much sat in my yard. Cause of death was the timer not stopping the charge (broke) and over a weekend the charger dried out the cells then went into thermal runaway and fused the batteries.

Last year I pulled out the old pack, put 30 spares into it, but it wasn't running. And so I dragged it to a corner of the yard with the E20 and left it. This fall I decided to see if anything would work so I went out this weekend and did a LOT of troubleshooting.

The problems:

The F3 fuse was not making contact. Cleaned up the fuse holder with a brass brush, put fuse in, had power across the fuse.

Brake switch is shot. Bypassed it with a wire nut for now. Brakes are totally frozen anyway.

With that I got power with key on to pins 1 with PTO off and 2 with PTO on. Bonus, the PTO contactor clicked in, so I know seat switch (bypassed) and key switch are working. Good.

Checked pin 6, nothing. Put tractor in speed 1, still nothing. Start switch connector fell off, removed throttle, cleaned everything, used a bit of tuner cleaner for lube, put it together, motor spins! But badly.

Tightened up armature bolts and CB1 lugs, tightened up the tension on the two belts (yes this E15 has a 2 belt sheave and transmission. It's smaller than an E20 motor so it's not a motor swap) fired it up and the tractor moved forward. Even better putting it in reverse causes it to move backwards.

Can't steer, so got out the grease gun and lubed the steering joints. Steers with great difficulty but it's getting better slowly.

Still only running in speed 1 till I advance the throttle far forward then field weakening comes on. I'm guessing 1a and 2a coils are not working, may be a problem with the IC board. Need to check that out.

One rear tire flat, filled it, will see if it holds. One front tire good, one the sidewall dry rotted so need to replace that.

Overall it's kind of a mess, but at least things seem to be sort of working. Going to have to figure out why 1a/2a are down (is 4 to 10 closing? 11 to 13?) but I'll work on that next weekend.

Need to think about what to do. I guess I could get  a diode assembly, fix the wreck of a charger that came out of my E20 and put it in this one. I would so much prefer a big 60 amp constant voltage charger though to give 3 strings of NiCDs a proper charging...

Poor old thing. I got it like 20 years ago from a guy who had it rotting in the woods behind his house. Part of the frame had disintegrated at the rear transmission lug so I welded angle iron and basically build a new frame. It will never mount a rear accessory but the tow bar is intact....

Still, it continues to run and I don't have the heart to scrap it. :-)


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