Look at that Cub! It is ELECTRIC!

[George Willer]

I 've got no problem with somebody experimenting with anything he wants to (unless it blows up too close to me). What I don't like is that every story about this thing makes it sound like he has built a practical tractor that runs off the solar panel. I don't know whether he is promoting it (and himself) that way or if it just happened that everyone that did a story on it came to that conclusion on their own.

It is like the difference between painting a Cub white and trying to sell a white non-demo as a demonstrator. Somewhere along the line, they both became frauds.

My feelings as well. I don't think the guy is really the Messiah. Everything I've read about it almost seems to claim he might be the second coming.

I think pumpkin launchers are fun but I don't think they should be promoted to the pentagon as something better. A fun project should be simply that.

[beaconlight]

I can't get all excited one way or the other but I still liked Buck Rogers if for no other reason than I had an uncle Buck.

[Eugene]

Electric Tractors
GE Elec-Trak®
Many people lament the demise of General Electric's ELEC-TRAK electric garden tractor, which was available in the 1970s under several different brand names. Some, but not many, of these are still around doing useful work. As you can imagine, parts can be difficult to come by and keeping them running is truly a labor of love. Here are some resources for current (or potential) ELEC-TRAK owners and enthusiasts:

• Find out more about these tractors through the Elec-Trak Owners Club.
• See Walt's Electric Tractor Page for ELEC-TRAK pictures, specifications and accessories.
• ELEC-TRAK parts and documentation are available from Technical Service & Parts (608) 868-6220 and from the Kansas Windpower catalog, (913) 364-4407.
• To correspond with other "ET" owners, subscribe to the Elec-Trak mailing list.

New Electric Tractors
Meanwhile, this may be a market ripe for entrepreneurial picking. Here is the only remaining manufacturer of electric tractors.
Electric Tractor Corp.
Manufacturers of the "Electric Ox" battery powered tractor. They have a front-mounted mower deck and several implements. 400A Collier-MacMillan Drive, Cambridge, ON N1R 7H7, Canada, (877) 533-4333.

http://www.electrictractor.com/html/multi_prod.shtml

This guy is hardly the first with a battery operated tractor or one in which the batteries are charged with solar power. Mother Earth News featured a G Allis converted to battery power prior to this tractor.

There is a battery powered Allis (WC or WD) at New Bloomfield, Mo. - operated by a church group.

[beaconlight]

Looks like my BIL golf cart with a mower.

[George Willer]

Electric Tractors
GE Elec-Trak®
Many people lament the demise of General Electric's ELEC-TRAK electric garden tractor, which was available in the 1970s under several different brand names. Some, but not many, of these are still around doing useful work. As you can imagine, parts can be difficult to come by and keeping them running is truly a labor of love.

Eugene,

Some time over several cold ones I may tell you about my departed friend Jack Urban and his collection of unusual tractors he built. Jack converted an Electrac to run on a small single cylinder gas engine. It had a couple Delco alternators and a very exotic breadboard to control the output and control speed. It had maximum torque at very low speed much like a steam engine runs.

It was nearly as impressive as his scratch built 4 cycle engine that had NO camshaft!

As mechanical geniuses go, Jack was nearly the Messiah!

[BigBill]

How do the UFO's tap into our electricity? How do they operate? Our goverment knows..... area 51... There has to be another way or another source of power that we don't know about yet or do we?.

[Ironhorse]

My take on it is that like it or not, we've made more technological advancements in the last 100 years than at any other time in history...people balked at the inventiion of electricity and didn't consider it to become the energy of the future but Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse never doubted that it would. Their only argument was whether it would be in the form of AC or DC current. Most people balked at the internal combustion engine but think about how many different internal combustion engine designs have been invented since its inception. Look how long its been since IH themselves had an engine that would crank up on gasoline and then convert over to kerosene. I think the point is that we can't close the door on any promising alternative at this point in time. You gotta admire Honda for pushing their new FCX Clarity into public use...at 68+ MPG, it looks good to someone with a 90 mile daily commute such as mine. I haven't seen any great strides in the use of nuclear energy for automotive use and I suspect that it's partly due to the fact that we just don't know what to do with the radioctaive by-product generated from a handful of nuclear energy plants so what happens when you add a few million nuclear powered automobiles to the mix?

I have to agree Rick, Bob and a few others...to say that Nuclear energy is the only solution is like closing the door on all other potential forms of alternative energy...we just don't need any that will drain the earth of its raw materials... [/quote]

[Rick Prentice]

My take on it is that like it or not, we've made more technological advancements in the last 100 years than at any other time in history

I agree completely with Gary. Somehow after reading all the negitive comments about John Howe's project, it sounds to me like there's a deeper issue that some of you are upset about, and not just that he installed some solar panels. I have to tell ya, everytime I buy gas now days, I think to myself----"I wish I was smart enough to invent something that would make the big oil companies go broke". Tell me you all haven't thought the same thing


Rick

[Into Tractors]

I wish I would have taken the offer from my Dad a few years back, as he offered to give me his GE garden tractor. Back in the 70's during the "First" oil crisis, my Dad bought a new "General Electric" garden tractor. It had a 5' mower deck under, and it was all electric. It had 8 deep cell batteries under the hood, and another 4-6 beneath the seat I think. They offered various attachments to include a snowblower. The tractor was about the size of the Numbered series Cub tractors.

It was all self-contained, under the hood was the charger system that you simply plugged into the wall. We would charge it overnight, and I would mow about 1 1/2 acres with it on a full charge.

It had some "guts" to it as well, mostly due to the weight and the DC motors it used. One day the brakes gave out on the 9N when I was bush-hogging around the lake, and dropped a wheel into the lake and got stuck.

I was able to take the GE tractor down to the lake with a chain, and pulled the 9N out (Had to disconnect the mower though from the 9N).

The only "Down-Side" to it was the cost of replacing the batteries, plus a lot of corrosion due to battery acid leakage.

[beaconlight]

I feel foolish because I no sooner mentioned Buck Rogers than Donny Posted a clip of a guy doing Buck Rogers with a back pack.

[Ironhorse]

That happens about every three days for me Rick...every 300 miles...every 3/4ths tank of gas...every $40.00 fill up...and in between those fill-ups, I'm thinking to myself..."if there was any other way to power this vehicle without fossil fuel..." the only other way out of buying it is to retire from my job... but then the wife would spend what I would save in fuel...

[Lurker Carl]

Marvelous concept, exciting adaptation, interesting contraption. John Howe put together a rudimentary gasoline/electric hybrid tractor. My feeling - his Cub is being hawked as something much more than it actually is.

The articles and videos I've seen about this particular machine don't align with what common sense leads me to think. Every video I've seen showing it in operation has the distinctive rumble of a C60 engine running on the soundtrack. It is presented in the narration as an electric tractor that doesn't rely on the original gasoline engine and that doesn't ring true.

Battery technology has made some exciting advances. Batteries, as a primary source of energy, still leaves much to be desired as an energy source for transportation. Long life, long service all require long recharge intervals. There isn't a method to quickly recharge the batteries when you need to renew that energy. And electricity isn't cheap either.

[George Willer]

I have to agree Rick, Bob and a few others...to say that Nuclear energy is the only solution is like closing the door on all other potential forms of alternative energy...we just don't need any that will drain the earth of its raw materials...

The problem looks to me like just the opposite. Nuclear energy is dismissed for political reasons while folks foolishly imagine there may be a better source. The nuclear waste problem has been solved long ago. It's only politicians that are preventing its use. Truth to be known, nuclear is much more environmentally friendly than any viable alternative.

Viable in this case means any source that has a snowball's chance of EVER producing energy on the scale we're accustomed to using. There isn't one.

Let's get on with a program we already know can unleash us from our dependence on folks who want to kill us.

[Don McCombs]

I don't think anyone (with the notable exception of a few media idiots) is saying that John Howe's hybrid tractor, in it's current form, is the solution to the world's energy problems. But, it is a step in the right direction, and that's away from 100% fossil fuels. The world's first threshing machine, cotton gin and powered airplane were all built in someone's garage.

[Lurker Carl]

http://www.flyingbeet.com/electricg/

Here is a true electric conversion, not a hybrid, of an Allis G. How to do it, where to get the parts, cost, updates - the whole nine yards. Very interesting series of articles.

As best as I can tell, the author is using two converted G tractors for seed planting and cultivating only. Plowing and mowing seem to be accomplished by a much larger diesel tractor.