A slight detour

I have spent a lot of time doing planning and research on the EV project this week, but have done nothing physical. So there is little to report, and less to show.

I have done a lot of reading on internet message boards dedicated to EVs of all types. Some people have converted their riding mowers to electric. I am really interested in this. I had a riding mower for about 11 years that I really liked. Unfortunately, it's motor blew up about a year ago. Like a lot of things, I rolled it into the backyard and saved it anyway. My brother gave me a free working mower to replace it, it just needed a new battery (thank you KK!). So now I am planning to do an EV conversion on this old mower. Many people do mower conversions as a stepping stone to a full-size vehicle conversion. Of course, I already have that, so this would probably be a concurrent project.

In a way, I am now glad that the motor on my trusty old mower blew. The carb and starter on this mower always gave me problems. The carb would clog about weekly, requiring removal, cleaning, and reinstallation. The starter, even with a charged battery, would barely crank the motor to life. And forget about shutting it off mid-mow; once you did this, it would not restart when hot. So you had to do the entire lawn at once, or you'd be stuck with a half-done lawn till the next day.

I dragged the mower into the garage, and promptly removed the blown engine and the gas tank. the motor is resting upside down in the photo; I have to remove the drive pulleys for reuse. I don't think I'll get past cleaning up the motor chassis for now, but hopefully we'll get to this someday.