[First Drive] Leyland 255 Tractor - Nissan Leaf EM61

[LRBen]

Using an ebike controller to drive a Leaf motor is really stupid, whoever told you it was a good idea?

Shan't be listening to them again! But it did work long enough, to be fair it was probably more my fault for running it in some sort of self learning mode rather than mess around with throttle inputs.

[LRBen]

Have a test battery from the MG fitted now. Had to remove most of the tinwork at the front, but it will do the job.

Currently cleaning up and painting the rear wheels before getting new tyres put on. Then I need to look at hooking up the new hydrostatic steering.
After that it should be ready for a first test drive.

My plan is to get some initial driving done with this battery around the farm, then switch it out for the ECorsa battery for some real work. Although it's all a bit delayed at the moment until I get the MG back on the road.

[LRBen]

Been doing a little bit of work on this in the evenings when it gets too dark to work in the MG shed. Mostly starting on the 12v system, running wires for lights etc.

It now has a full set of new tyres.

Also got it spinning for the first time tonight!
https://youtube.com/shorts/P448f2cb54c?feature=share

Couldn't go too fast as there isn't any coolant in anything just yet.

[Alibro]

Nice work, looking good.
What are the legal implications of converting a tractor? Will you be able to drive it on the road?

[LRBen]

Nice work, looking good.
What are the legal implications of converting a tractor? Will you be able to drive it on the road?

Shouldn't be any reason why I can't drive it on the road.

I've already got it road registered with photos from before I stripped it down, then assuming it goes the same as the quad bike the DVLA will send someone out who had no idea what they are looking at. Then they will change the log book. It's less of an issue with this since it's already over 40 years old and agricultural anyway, so there is no tax income being lost.

I've had a quote from the NFU for insurance for £160 for the year, that covers work on the farm, tractor runs and contracting. It's a bit more than usual but also nowhere near the increase that the MG insurance cost.

[LRBen]

Made a good start on the 12v wiring over the holidays. The main fuseboxes and relays are in, dashboard is in, some lights works.

Made a short video to give an overview of the whole project so far.



The power steering is almost there as well. I just need to finish the last link between the ram and the wheel.

After that is done I should be able to give it a short drive. Then I will have to look at installing the charger and putting in some sort of cooling loop.

[Alibro]

Outstanding work mate, well done.

[LRBen]

Got the charger and socket physically installed and almost wired up. Potentially might be able to have a first attempt at charging this weekend.

Also tried the power steering for the first time. Still not connected to the wheels but the ram does move pretty well so I think the Astra pump will work just fine. I'm quite pleased that part worked first time, it's a real mis-match of parts. I think I'll still need to adjust the ram at a later date as the throw is longer than the wheels will turn.

[Alibro]

Have you checked the current being drawn by the Zafira PAS pump? I had one that sounded like that and it was drawing around 40A at idle and refused to spool down. The Volvo pump I just installed spooled down to draw only 7A when not turning the wheel and is lovely and quiet. (relatively )

[LRBen]

Have you checked the current being drawn by the Zafira PAS pump? I had one that sounded like that and it was drawing around 40A at idle and refused to spool down. The Volvo pump I just installed spooled down to draw only 7A when not turning the wheel and is lovely and quiet.

Not yet, I'll put a clamp meter on it at the weekend and see what it does.

[LRBen]

Steering is done, have the track rod ends off for painting then I can cross that off the list.



Just working on charging now, which is a bit elongated as I have to compile at home then test at the farm. But fairly confident I should have it charging very soon.

Also had my radiator and water pump arrived this week so I can start on the coolant loop, after that I can take it for it's first short drive.

[LRBen]

First real drive!



There are three big things left to do before I can try and drive it properly. Mount the 12v battery properly, not perched on top of the HV pack.
Get it charging, I'm still working on that but confident it will work.
Get some values coming out of the BMS, that isn't quite so necessary but it would be good to get that working before I charge it too often. It is a very unbalanced pack and has been sat around for 6 months.

Still lots to do but getting that first drive in is really important to keep up that motivation.

[LRBen]

One more milestone reached today with a successful attempt of charging. Took me a few weeks to get this sorted but in the end I think the biggest issue was a wiring mix up in charge port lock motor and feedback.
Got it running with zombie today, very basic and still lots of bugs iron out to make it more usable. For example the charge port locks when you first insert a connector, but won't unlock until the connector is removed...

As far as I know the first hacked VAG charger working in a conversion.

[LRBen]

Done a tiny bit more with the charging interface. I can now stop the charge manually, although it still won't unlock. I think I might try and recode the charger again and see if there is anything I missed regarding the lock mechanism.

Took it out for a bit more of a drive on the weekend, getting quite confident now that it will drive ok. Having an issue with the hydraulics at the moment, but once I fix that and finish off the linkages I can see about doing some work with it.

[LRBen]

Got the charger working pretty well now. Got around the locking issue by coding out the lock motor. So now the charger will just work when you plug in an EVSE.

Hydraulics are now working, so now I can finish putting the linkages back together and then I might try and take it out for some work! There is some weed wiping to be done soon and I might try out the finger bar mower for some topping.

On the throttle side I have hooked up the foot throttle with a proper throttle cable, unfortunately I couldn't get the hand throttle and foot throttle connected to the same pot, the hand throttle has a much small range of movement. On the original pump this is overcome by the hand throttle attaching lower to the fuel pump lever than the foot throttle.
My current idea is to reuse the hand throttle as a switch for cruise control.

[LRBen]

Wasn't sure which thread this photo belonged too. But I figure it will suit this one as an update. Moved the Defender to a different shed today, as well as a few other things that were in the way.

Since the last post I have put all the linkages back on and fixed a few hydraulics leaks. I got around the hand throttle issue by extending the lever on the hand throttle, so I now have a functional foot and hand throttle.

Just waiting on the fields to dry out a little more then I can take it out on the weed wiper, quite possibly this weekend.

[LRBen]

Skipped the weed wiper and went straight to PTO work this weekend. Managed to sort out the finger bar mower and get some work done with it. Just a small patch of nettles and thistles.

Also been using it around the farm yard in the last few weeks so getting a good feel for things.

I have a few thought so far and there is definitely room for improvement.

My adaptor for the flywheel is not great and more than slightly off centre. It works for now but does make some noise. I actually don't have all that much use for the clutches anyway so in the winter I will probably take out the flywheel and clutches and just have a straight connection through to the gearbox.

I think cruise control would actually work really well in this use case. Sounds weird to start with but it does make sense. Currently the leaf motor is torque request controlled. However with variable loads such as when using hydraulics or varied terrain a constant torque request results in fluctuating rpm. When I use the hand throttle I have to constantly adjust it to stop it speeding up constantly or slowing down. My idea is to instead map the hand throttle to a seperate pot, probably through the display Arduino and then have that arduino send an updated cruise control value based on the position of the hand throttle. Letting me set a cruise control target of somewhere between 500 and 2500 rpm or so.
Zombie currently doesn't have cruise control so are a few obstacles for this plan!

It's fast! I didn't realise at first since I have only been driving this one for a couple months now. But I got on another tractor a few days ago and thought it was stuck in low range because it was just so slow.

The power steering pump is a little bit lacking in flow rate. It does steer fine but there is a limit to the rate of turning. I'm thinking of maybe revisiting the idea of a separate hydraulic pump which would then also feed the steering.


Before all of that I have an Ecorsa battery coming next week. So the plan will be to replace the current test pack with a those batteries and then I can finish all the tinwork. It will start looking like a real tractor again then.

[LRBen]

Corsa battery arrived and the modules have been harvested. The hardest part was the 2cm of sealant around the lid. Took hours to get the lid off.

I'm going to be using 16 of the 18 modules for 96s, otherwise the DC-DC won't be happy. it does bring me down to 45kWh but that's fine with me.
Been working on the design for the box in CAD. Originally I was going to go for thicker aluminium sheets and spacers. But that's expensive and weight isn't an issue so it's all steel.
4 modules per layer in 4 layers, probably solid busbars in each layer then a flexi between the levels. The top is the junction box, but I got lazy with that so I'll just drill out the holes for contactors etc when I get it. Luckily there isn't really much in the way of ancillaries for this, just the charger and the DC-DC. I'm going to use the pass through on the charger to connect to the DC-DC so that makes it pretty simple in terms of HV connectors.

Ideally I'm going to build this away from the tractor, then drop it in over a day or so to reduce down time. In reality I might just build it up in situ again since it's not like it's a daily driver.

[LRBen]

Finally got the battery box parts back from laser cutting and folded up last week. Today I found some time to weld it all together and it turned out pretty well. Made some design changes from my last post and brought the top layer in a little bit, this way the connectors shouldn't stick out the back of the box too much. Still need to buy some more primer, final coat will be Massey Ferguson silver mist to match the wheels.

[LRBen]

With other jobs out of the way it's time to start on the winter projets. For the Leyland this means installing the new batteries.
Old pack removed and new box thrown in to check dimensions. The good news is that it will fit and there is plenty of room to spare above, so I can get to work on some mounting points. I'm planning to soft mount it with metalastic bushes, although I'm not sure it's entirely necessary in this situation.
It's looking like I will also have to rejig some of the ancillaries to get it fitting well. I need to move the inverter over slightly, and turn the charger around. But that gives me the oportunity to mount those with better designed brackets that bits of angle welded together. I can also remount the charge socket properly as well.
Talking of charge socket, I decided I will use the CCS socket to it's fullest with FOCCCI for CCS control. I have some spare contactors and I bought a few FOCCCI boards from JLCPCB for the Land Rover and MG, so adding this to the tractor isn't all that expensive.

It's nice to see it finally looking like a tractor again, this the first time the bonnet has been on with everything installed.

[Jacobsmess]

What's the cost of the laser cutting of the box out of curiosity?

[LRBen]

What's the cost of the laser cutting of the box out of curiosity?

I think it was about £110. For the the box, plus 5 thicker base places for each layer of modules. I bundled it in with a larger order with work so I think that knocked the price down a bit.

I looked at laser cutting the busbars but that was £300 or so. So I'll do those manually.