[Reid_in_QC]

Conversion was put on ice for most of the season due to time constraints. I grudgingly reinstalled the ICE and it ran as reliably and stinky as ever through a good busy spring and summer in both the unheated greenhouses and the field.

Luckily, a friend made progress on his similar project, got his finished and gave me to proverbial kick in the pants to finish mine so I started working on it again in the evenings a couple weeks ago.

It's now finally finished and working properly and I think I can put the Honda engine up for sale and throw away a couple jerry cans 'cause it's never going back to ICE while I'm here.

Here are a few new pics and a link to a long-winded video walkthrough that's aimed more at folks who don't know EVs because mostly it's other farmers who are excited about this project and ask me all manner of questions. So I shot a long, rambling video and now I can direct them there with their questions.

Anyway. I'd say the project is a big success. The machine is back in service, almost daily, on our commercial organic vegetable farm and it seems likely that I'll be able to make little improvements over time without having to redesign it significantly. For a prototype it's doing admirably well.


~ Reid

 

[electro wrks]

The more I think about what you've done here, the more I like it! The water-proof, rugged, interchangeable battery system you've developed could be used on rotary push mowers, converted riding mowers, converted snow blowers, small forklifts(like you've done), quads and other equipment. This could be in series and parallel battery combinations on various equipment, in addition to the many possible BCS attachments.

One concern I've had with dedicated single use battery packs, say on a converted Troybilt or a BCS tiller, was that they would only be used for a short period of time seasonally during the year. This would be kind-of a waste of expensive battery capacity. Your system addresses that concern by conveniently using the batteries on other pieces of equipment. Great work!

Any concerns about cooling the volt cells? Could you draw up schematic of your wiring of the BCS? Have you thought about attaching the Anderson plugs directly to the ammo boxes that would automatically plug into Andersons built into the cradles?

 

[Reid_in_QC]

Thanks for the kind words electro wrks.

I really do think that these power brick units, or ammo can power units (ACPU) as a friend dubbed them, are going to be super handy with a multitude of uses.

I have a forklift steering motor with a cycloidal gear reducer and want to make a 1 or 2-man earth auger with it but I'm also keen to look at repowering a brush saw/weed whacker and also maybe a small chainsaw for limbing and pruning work. I'd like to rig up a backpack harness that will let me carry one of these 1kWh bricks around on my back and deliver portable power at 24VDC to whatever tool I can conjure up. 30 lbs in a waterproof armored case seems pretty good to me for 1kWh and I keep thinking of other things I could use it for.

This idea of portability, and the existing config of my pallet jigger with mounted Anderson connector was what led me to keep the SB175s on a flexible cable tether rather than pinning them to the case and making a mating cradle. All told I think that the positive lock-in cradle would be really cool but perhaps more trouble than it's worth and possibly less flexible (sic) a design overall.

Keep pitching ideas as they come. I hadn't thought of a rotary push mower yet - good one.

I will try to draw up the wiring diagram and post it but it's not very complicated.

thanks for the interest and encouragement.

~ reid

 

[Reid_in_QC]

Electric auger up and running a couple weeks ago. Worked like a charm and ably twisted in a couple hundred ground anchors that would have otherwise been a terrible pain, as in all years past.

The unit proved really heavy to manage until my wife found a shoulder harness that allows the auger to hang from your front and the battery pack to hang from your back. Downright ridiculous but surprisingly tolerable for an hour or so at a time. One side effect of this configuration is that whoever wears the getup quickly becomes the Augernator and starts talking a bit like Shwarzenegger but it's cured when the suit comes off

The task of driving in 200 ground anchors drained one 1kWh battery pack by only about 50%!

Videos on YouTube.