Remote Control Tank Drive

After reading a ton about remote control lawnmowers, I decided to build my own all purpose remote control vehicle for general yard use and lawnmowing etc. I started with a track set from an old snowblower. I reconfigured the track mounts as I wanted everything to be made out of stainless steel. I then built the pan within the tracksets so that everything would sit low enough to give it a good center of gravity while still having enough clearance to get over rocks etc.

I purchased the wheelchair motors from ebay and also bought a sabretooth motor driver to connect to the remote control receiver.

My first attempt used only a single wheelchair battery which didn't have enough speed for me so I added a second which greatly improves both torque and speed.

My plan next is to start adding accessories to it. I am planning of attaching a standard lawnmower to the front of it with a swivel wheelset. Next on the list is a small yard wagon to assist in gardening and then finally a snow plow or snowblower. The idea of the design is that I can add whatever attachment I want later on.

Step 1: Some More Details

I have been getting a bunch of feedback so I figured I would go into a slight bit more detail.

The tracks are made from an original Sears Tracdrive snowblower. I bought the original sets from kijiji and modified the mounts and made them out of stainless. Once I had the trac drive system figured out I next purchased some motors off kijiji. The motors are direct drive to the tracksets. The only chains are within the tracksets to link main shaft to the drive gear.

Step 2: Motor Types.

Pride Jazzy Z11 Left & Right Motors & Gearboxes. These were the type of motors I purchased. Just type them in Google and you should find them. They were good in that they were a good size.

Step 3:

I then looked into motor controllers which would work with the design. I choose a Sabertooth dual 25A motor driver. This is a self contained unit that already is programmed to do a multitude of things. After looking at the costs of building my own amplifier and writing code for it, I decided this was a proven design that worked well.

https://www.dimensionengineering.com/products/sabertooth2x25

Step 4: Chassis

Next was the chassis design out of stainless. I did it on Autocad. I purchased two wheelchair batteries to give me the torque and speed I needed. The above designs show the sketchup and autocad designs. The final top cover I haven't made yet, but the plan is shown in the attached pics. this is the reason for the change in chassis elevation.

The amplifier and controller are mounted over the motors on a small platform.

Thanks.