Hacking Tractors

Monday, 11 May 2015 07:56 Hrs

❝ How to recharge a tractor battery using the sun.

Walk and talk

Visiting the Old man a couple of weeks ago and got dragged outside for the usual, ‟Walk & talk”. It’s a time where I’m shown stuff that he’s done. It’s always been this way and how I”ve learned to hack as a kid. This weeks LO-TECH treat, HOWTO recharge the ‟Ute (Whitely) and the tractor battery using passive sunlight”.

❝ Now both Ute and/or tractor can be passively charging away and ready to roll.

Old ways

Prior to this we had a fleet of three hand—cranked, petrol/kerosene powered Fordsons. [1] You didn’t need a battery, just a steady swing and some luck in case the engine back-fired and ripped your arm off. It’s pretty simple and I’m light on the technical details, but you’ll get the idea looking at the pictures:

1) Grab a solar cell and put it in the sun.

2) Wire up the solar cell to the battery.

3) Connect the battery to the starter.

If you want to re-charge the Ute, repeat the above steps. You need a totally different hack to swap and re-connect a PTO to the tractor.

Reference

[0] The Petrol / Kerosene, TVO (Tractor Vapourising Oil) combination was introduced mainly for cost and is found in tractors in the late 1940's to early 1950's. The Kerosene had zero tax. The idea was to fire the engine up with Petrol then switch to Kero when it was warm. You can read more about it here: