Hello world

MBF Dan

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Joined
May 14, 2021
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35
Yup going for the cheap software joke as I was a controls engineer for a couple decades.
I have been reading a fair amount on here lately and wanted to introduce myself. I have a small farm in New Hampshire in the USA. Moat Brook Farm which is where the MBF in my handle comes from.
I hay about 100 acres of fields a year and have 14 beef cows just a small one man show.
I am planing on building an electric tractor out of a couple old case ingersoll garden tractors. The idea is to have it be 4wd articulated. I have a case ingersoll 448 with a 10hp diesel engine I swapped onto it about 8 years ago I guess. I use it all the time for wood splitting raking hay and rototiller work. Very handy little tractor.
The best part of those tractors is that the motor simply runs a hydraulic pump so if you spin the pump you have swapped the engine to something else. Not the most efficient vehicles but portable hydraulics is always useful around a farm.
Anyway I figured I would say hello and mention what I am starting to collect cells for.
 
Wow, ambitious project. Would love to see the progress on this one. Converting a tractor to run on electric will be no easy task for sure.
First off, Welcome to the forum!

Having a hydrostatic transmission is a great unit to work on for this project. As you said, just changing out what drives the pump and you're good to go.
 
Thanks I will have to start a thread for it when I get further along. I am planing on using military surplus 50 cal ammo cans to house the batteries. I have already collected the cans. That will make them portable at about 25lbs each I think.
My goal is to eventually also convert my old farmall H but that will require more expensive electronics to run a variable speed motor. For the case ingersoll I can literally just turn on a motor contractor and run the motor at full speed.
They are odd tractors not actually hydrostatic they have a two speed rear end with a hydraulic motor that run the rear end and a simple flow control valve to control the hydraulic motor. So the case ingersoll tractors simply run a normal 12 gpm hydraulic gear pump. The design dates back to the 60s and I believe it is still made today by a small company in Maine I forgot the name.
That photo is of a tractor someone made in Massachusetts years ago if you Google case ingersoll 4x4 pickup you will find it. I want to build something very similar but with a deck over flat bed. I find I use my pickup truck to haul just a light load all the time on my farm. Something that would carry 10 bales of hay roughly is my goal. But I will also use it for all the things i use my case ingersoll garden tractor for today.
The best I can figure I will need a 4kw motor to run the 12 gpm pump and i want to design for 5 hours run time. So that is my rough concept.
There is a photo of my current 10hp diesel with the rototiller on it. I have 4 of those I can use for this project and might just convert two if then to use the same battery pack as I can see some jobs might be better with the 2wd shorter tractor.
 

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I have a case ingersoll 448 with a 10hp diesel engine
Very interesting idea which made me think about the math and feasibility of this. BTW welcome to the forum.(y)
So 10hp is ≈ 7.4kW and 1 gallon of diesel (US) supplies ≈ 40kWh so if you have a 10 gallon fuel tank you have 400kWhs available.
At optimum torque rpm what would the fuel consumption be? Looking at a naturally aspirated diesel that would be ≈0.6 gal per hr.
That's ≈ 25kWh. so to run this tractor for 1 hr at optimum torque with a 14sxxp 48V battery you would need ≈ 520Ah of battery.
There are other factors of course as you would not be running at full torque 100% of the time.
The question is at what voltage would the electric motor be running at? If it is 100V it would be better as cable size and amperage would be lower.
let's say a 5Kw motor at full load at 48V will use ≈104A at 100V it would be 50A. Just thinking on paper how feasible it would be.
Interesting project. BTW if you ever visit Moat Mountain Brewing Company say hi to Steve Johnson the owner and send my regards from Wolf.

Wolf
 
So 10hp is ≈ 7.4kW and 1 gallon of diesel (US) supplies ≈ 40kWh so if you have a 10 gallon fuel tank you have 400kWhs available.
So thanks for running some numbers. A couple of quick points. First I removed a 18hp gas motor from that tractor and replaced it with a 10hp air cooled diesel simply because I had the motor from another project that didn't happen in the past. But in reality I should have a 12hp diesel I have read 1hp gas or diesel per one gpm of a gear pump hydraulic motor and given how the diesel motor bogs down under heavy load that seems reasonable. I have also read that when you size a diesel or gas motor to a hydraulic pump you need 2.5 times the hp rating for the same pump because of the difference in torque response. My gut feeling is this makes since given my experience as a controls engineer designing servo driven industry equipment but I have never done the swap before to measure the actual draw on an electric motor running a gear pump. Basically low end torque is needed for gear pump and gas or diesel simply don't have good torque response compared to electric.
As to fuel consumption that tractor only has a 2 liter fuel tank shockingly small and it is seldom that I run it out of fuel. Which is also why I want to start with it. My bigger farm tractors seem way too power hungry to convert at the price of batteries today.
 
Yup going for the cheap software joke as I was a controls engineer for a couple decades.

100: mov ah,9
102: mov dx,200
104: int 21
106 int 20
200: 'Welcome to the forum MBF!$'

Software answer for you!
jes :giggle: :coffee:
 
Welcome Dan we just had another member join that has an electric tractor or did haveit aparently it died after 10years of us he is in the southwest opposite corner of the USA. I have thought about converting a garden tractor, maybe a bit larger. yours sounds perfect to convert.
Enjoy learning about all the different projects.
later floyd
 
Hi! Did you manage to implement this project? Can you share your experience? I think many people would be interested. I'm a novice farmer, and so far, I'm not sure I will continue to act. I inherited the farm, and so far, I have only bought 3 Mini Tractors and hired a few workers. I'm considering optimizing my energy costs because it's too expensive now and difficult for me to pay. I would be glad if someone shared their experience of how you are saving on electricity and fuel now.
 
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