Preparing the Tractor for the Electric Transplant

Converting Your Old Allis-Chalmers "G" Cultivating Tractor to an Electric Vehicle:
Step 1: Taking apart the Original Tractor
(Estimated time: About 2 hours)
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Here's how our the old Allis looked after we removed the gas tank, but before we started to take off the engine. Not pretty!

Unscrewing the clutch lever.
The gear cog you see above ran the original hydraulic pump (more on that later.)

(Back View of the tractor, looking into the open clutch housing after unbolting the engine.)
To start with, you need to remove the gas tank, engine and original battery box from the tractor.
Depending on how corroded things are and whether or not you have a torch to deal with such corrosion this could take an hour or more, but it should go quickly.
Taking off the gas tank and battery box are especially and obviously easy and good places to start (especially if you may need a torch later... you want that gas tank FAR FAR away!)
Carefully remove and save the throttle control rod that lets you adjust the gas flow (connects from underneath the seat to the engine) because we'll be using that again.
. Also, don't forget to unscrew the clutch bar (see picture). Because this is an electric tractor, there is no reason to HAVE a clutch. A gasoline engine is always on and spinning, so you need a clutch to disengage the spinning motor from the gears, but an ELECTRIC motor is actually OFF when you aren't moving, so a clutch plate is completely extraneous.
That being said, PLEASE BE CAREFUL when actually removing the engine from the clutch housing because we will be using the original clutch plate to tie the new electric motor to your original transmission. This saves a BUNCH of purchases and machine work! Of course we'll also be using all the old engine mounting holes and nibs, so don't beat be beating on things TOO hard... or let bolts break off in their holes, because we'll NEED those holes later!
You shouldn't have to do it yourself, but we actually removed the clutch housing from the tractor and THEN remove the engine from that, then re-bolted on the clutch housing to arrive at the stage you are seeing in the bottom picture.
If you aren't sure what I mean by clutch housing, look at the engine. It's one obvious "PIECE" that bolts on to another PIECE that then bolts on to the body of the tractor. We just want you to remove the ENGINE itself. You don't have to remove that housing like we did. though you can if you want to for fun.
I took ours apart because I really wanted to see inside since this tractor had been sitting around for so many years completely unused.
It's amazing that after 50 years of combined use (and abuse the last 10 or so) all the inner gears looked so perfectly unworn... There was some collected sludge that I sort of dug out, but otherwise it looked like it was ready for another 50 more years.
We scraped off the remains of the old gasket and used form-a-gasket stuff from NAPA to remake a gasket and rebolted the housing on. You shouldn't have to do this... I'm just mentioning it because it was sort of interesting to see this sad, old tractor that people had rolled down hills into trees... with rotted tires and peeling paint and bent steering arms look so pristine and almost factory fresh on the inside!
Though I'm saying being careful... even after removing the bolts, I had to beat on the engine a bit to get it separated from the clutch housing... I actually hit it with a sledge hammer (with a 2x4 to cushion the blow) and I put pallets under the back to sort of catch it when it did start to come off. Then Kathryn and I bullied it off and away from the tractor and into the bucket loader where I dumped it temporarily about 20 feet from our front door... where it still sits as the first thing people see as they walk up to the house. This neighborhood was getting too snooty for my tastes anyway.
After the engine is off, look at the clutch plate, which is the grey plate thing on the tractor end of the engine. It has what looks like the inside of a PTO shaft in the middle of it. Save this unit!. Just unbolt it from whatever it's attatched to EVEN if it looks like it's in bad shape. It will save us from having to make or buy something like it later.

View from INSIDE the clutch housing. Look to the lower left to see the small aluminum scrap we used to patch the hole left over from removing the clutch lever.

View from OUTSIDE the clutch housing of the patch we made.

As noted and seen in the picture above, we removed the clutch lever. But then we had this open hole, and we didn't want mice to crawl in to the housing so we used epoxy and a roughly cut piece of aluminum scrap to cover the hole.
There are two pictures here. I don't have specifics of size because it's a random scrap piece that we just sort of shoved in the hole and then gooed up with epoxy to cover remaining gaps and hold it in place.
There are NO places you can scew or bolt anything too... and welding onto cast iron was beyond our abilities. Anyway, it actuall works very well and it doesn't look bad at all.
Make sure to scrub and rub any old oil or dirt from around the edges so the epoxy can bond well. This is not a necessary step, but if you have mice that like to wander through your equipment like we seem to, it's something to think about.

View of the hydraulic motor plate

Also NOT a necessary step (and only applies to those models of the Allis Chalmers that have a hydraulic pump) but we removed our hydraulic pump and replaced it with another plate and form-a-gasketed it on (oil leeks out of this area).
On our first Electric "G" tractor, we actually used the original hydraulic motor, and obviously (if you have one) you can too! But we foudn that it was slow... and so we replaced it with a 12 volt electric hydraulic motor and control from Northern Tool and equipment. We'll get to that part later in the instructions if you DO decide to do that.
We just left the hydraulic motor in place on the other tractor and so we didn't need to make any special plates, but on this tractor we thought we'd "reduce drag" and remove the motor all together. In retrospect, an unconnected hydraulic motor isn't really producing noticeable drag, so... I guess it was silly to do, but we were having fun. You can always do it later if you feel like it (or if you have a leaky hydraulic pump!)
Now you're ready to start putting things together! (Go back to the Home Page.)

Here's how our the old Allis looked after we removed the gas tank, but before we started to take off the engine. Not pretty! Unscrewing the clutch lever. The gear cog you see above ran the original hydraulic pump (more on that later.) (Back View of the tractor, looking into the open clutch housing after unbolting the engine.)	To start with, you need to remove the gas tank, engine and original battery box from the tractor. Depending on how corroded things are and whether or not you have a torch to deal with such corrosion this could take an hour or more, but it should go quickly. Taking off the gas tank and battery box are especially and obviously easy and good places to start (especially if you may need a torch later... you want that gas tank FAR FAR away!) Carefully remove and save the throttle control rod that lets you adjust the gas flow (connects from underneath the seat to the engine) because we'll be using that again. . Also, don't forget to unscrew the clutch bar (see picture). Because this is an electric tractor, there is no reason to HAVE a clutch. A gasoline engine is always on and spinning, so you need a clutch to disengage the spinning motor from the gears, but an ELECTRIC motor is actually OFF when you aren't moving, so a clutch plate is completely extraneous. That being said, PLEASE BE CAREFUL when actually removing the engine from the clutch housing because we will be using the original clutch plate to tie the new electric motor to your original transmission. This saves a BUNCH of purchases and machine work! Of course we'll also be using all the old engine mounting holes and nibs, so don't beat be beating on things TOO hard... or let bolts break off in their holes, because we'll NEED those holes later! You shouldn't have to do it yourself, but we actually removed the clutch housing from the tractor and THEN remove the engine from that, then re-bolted on the clutch housing to arrive at the stage you are seeing in the bottom picture. If you aren't sure what I mean by clutch housing, look at the engine. It's one obvious "PIECE" that bolts on to another PIECE that then bolts on to the body of the tractor. We just want you to remove the ENGINE itself. You don't have to remove that housing like we did. though you can if you want to for fun. I took ours apart because I really wanted to see inside since this tractor had been sitting around for so many years completely unused. It's amazing that after 50 years of combined use (and abuse the last 10 or so) all the inner gears looked so perfectly unworn... There was some collected sludge that I sort of dug out, but otherwise it looked like it was ready for another 50 more years. We scraped off the remains of the old gasket and used form-a-gasket stuff from NAPA to remake a gasket and rebolted the housing on. You shouldn't have to do this... I'm just mentioning it because it was sort of interesting to see this sad, old tractor that people had rolled down hills into trees... with rotted tires and peeling paint and bent steering arms look so pristine and almost factory fresh on the inside! Though I'm saying being careful... even after removing the bolts, I had to beat on the engine a bit to get it separated from the clutch housing... I actually hit it with a sledge hammer (with a 2x4 to cushion the blow) and I put pallets under the back to sort of catch it when it did start to come off. Then Kathryn and I bullied it off and away from the tractor and into the bucket loader where I dumped it temporarily about 20 feet from our front door... where it still sits as the first thing people see as they walk up to the house. This neighborhood was getting too snooty for my tastes anyway. After the engine is off, look at the clutch plate, which is the grey plate thing on the tractor end of the engine. It has what looks like the inside of a PTO shaft in the middle of it. Save this unit!. Just unbolt it from whatever it's attatched to EVEN if it looks like it's in bad shape. It will save us from having to make or buy something like it later.

View from INSIDE the clutch housing. Look to the lower left to see the small aluminum scrap we used to patch the hole left over from removing the clutch lever. View from OUTSIDE the clutch housing of the patch we made.	As noted and seen in the picture above, we removed the clutch lever. But then we had this open hole, and we didn't want mice to crawl in to the housing so we used epoxy and a roughly cut piece of aluminum scrap to cover the hole. There are two pictures here. I don't have specifics of size because it's a random scrap piece that we just sort of shoved in the hole and then gooed up with epoxy to cover remaining gaps and hold it in place. There are NO places you can scew or bolt anything too... and welding onto cast iron was beyond our abilities. Anyway, it actuall works very well and it doesn't look bad at all. Make sure to scrub and rub any old oil or dirt from around the edges so the epoxy can bond well. This is not a necessary step, but if you have mice that like to wander through your equipment like we seem to, it's something to think about.

View of the hydraulic motor plate	Also NOT a necessary step (and only applies to those models of the Allis Chalmers that have a hydraulic pump) but we removed our hydraulic pump and replaced it with another plate and form-a-gasketed it on (oil leeks out of this area). On our first Electric "G" tractor, we actually used the original hydraulic motor, and obviously (if you have one) you can too! But we foudn that it was slow... and so we replaced it with a 12 volt electric hydraulic motor and control from Northern Tool and equipment. We'll get to that part later in the instructions if you DO decide to do that. We just left the hydraulic motor in place on the other tractor and so we didn't need to make any special plates, but on this tractor we thought we'd "reduce drag" and remove the motor all together. In retrospect, an unconnected hydraulic motor isn't really producing noticeable drag, so... I guess it was silly to do, but we were having fun. You can always do it later if you feel like it (or if you have a leaky hydraulic pump!) Now you're ready to start putting things together! (Go back to the Home Page.)