farm utility vehicle, 3rd iteration

I need something for getting around and moving modest loads.

I've got a fucked up foot, and it will probably get worse in the medium term, meaning another lengthy round of surgery/recovery

Initially, in urgent need of a solution that could accomodate a cast & pegleg, I bought a jumbo electric fat-tire trike. Daymak boomerbeast with awd. Great concept. Absolute junk. Build quality is insanely bad. Pieces fall off, often. Motors have too little torque, meant to go stupid fast not for rough terrain at a controllable speed. Front motor has too much power, rear motor not enough. Battery sucks. Currently dead.

As that was dying, in somewhat less of a rush, I bought a Yamaha Kodiak 700. Great quad. Gets through thick mud, up narrow steep trails. Pulls a good load. Terrifyingly fast.

Not a good fit fit for 10-30 trips @ 150 metres each per day, though. Drinks gas, gets condensation in the oil from never getting up to proper operating temp. Tears up my gravel driveway pretty badly over time. Will keep it for firewood/getting into the woods, for now.


Time to try again.

I really want it to be electric. I cannot peddle. I don't need stupid fast. It needs to handle iffy farm roads, not necessarily serious offroading. I hope to be able to move 4x 5 gallon buckets or 4x jerry-cans of diesel, or a couple decent sized toolboxes.. or pull a light trailer with 4ish sheets of plywood.

Electric SxS is too much size, capacity, and money.

Golf cart? Fat tire cargo ebike? Modified garden tractor? Some other weirder creature?

What do you use for this sort of job?

Golf carts with a flat bed are great for what you want to do.

Maybe a garden tractor (ride on mower?) with a utility trailer. I got mine on the side of the road for $400 bucks, it’s an old wheel horse mower tractor. It’s not electric though. Pros- easy to work on cause it’s old, reliable, fun, utilitarian. Cons- loud, dirty (won’t be dirty if your just riding it around)

I hope your foot troubles get sorted!

We have a little semi off road invalid scooter. It was given to us as I thought it would be useful for less able visitors to get up and down the hill. I guess it's like a small golf cart, and feels like it is going faster than it probably is. It can take a small trailer though I haven't tried that out yet.

picture from the manufacturer's site

Beamer Tramper

It takes standard lead acid batteries and has a range of up to 30 miles depending on load, temperature and terrain. It easily goes up and down our hill a few times on a charge, which is all I need.

D Nikolls wrote:I need something for getting around and moving modest loads......

Initially, in urgent need of a solution that could accomodate a cast & pegleg, I bought a jumbo electric fat-tire trike. .....

As that was dying, in somewhat less of a rush, I bought a Yamaha Kodiak 700. ......

Not a good fit fit for 10-30 trips @ 150 metres each per day, though. Drinks gas, gets condensation in the oil from never getting up to proper operating temp. ......

I really want it to be electric.......

Electric SxS is too much size, capacity, and money......

I've pasted photos of the two vehicles below in other posts, but appropriate to add again here.  I'll get discussion out of the way on the Polaris Ranger EV just because I don't know what your budget is....Polaris may bring back the Ranger EV (electric), but for now they are pushing the Kinetic which as you noted has a hefty price tag.... over $20,000.00 USD.  I bought the Ranger EV shown below in a rare lucky happenstance:  It was a 2012 model with everything working (lead-acid batteries) and was just used by an elderly person at their lake place, so no rough-housing with the rig.  I did not bargain him down on the $5000 asking price as that was well worth it.  It's my wife's machine for doing much of what you describe.....short 5-10 trips around ~20 acres 10 - 15 times per day.  Night feeding of her animals to haul buckets, etc. then into carport (summer) or garage (winter) at night.  Daytime (3 seasons) charging up in carport from solar panel.  Only a few issues due to age....a 48V->12V converter died and needed replacement ($40) and I replaced the aging batteries upon purchase.  It is high-clearance and 4X4 for when we need it which is rare.  Wife loves this machine!

Golf cart:  My baby! ;-)    1990 EZGO Marathon 36V.  Still running lead-acid batteries with intent to go lithium soon.  I garage this for the winter and it is not used due to the severity of our winter climate.  Worth noting:  The batteries are old and probably nearly dead....but HOW I use it makes all the difference.  On our flat terrain and with a solar panel for a roof, I deplete a lot of the charge in short trips, but Mr Sun tops the charge back up to 100% in 10 - 15 minutes *under the use conditions described*.  If the batteries were newer depletion likely would me much less, but recharging to 100% may take longer as well.  Bottom line here is that for the use context described, I've NEVER drained the batteries to where the cart won't move. So now I view a sunny day as my battery-in-the-sky and love the fact that it's never plugged in until winter storage (batteries MUST have charge maintained intermittently in winter to prevent killing them).  The golf cart is a champ...along with Club Car, Yamaha and a few others, these brands have stood the test of time and were well made for many decades.  Mine cost $1500 USD....most I see on the online used markets are around $3000-$6000 depending on model-year and condition.  As you might expect, DEEP knowledge in many forums on the internet for rehabbing legacy golf carts and modifying for various needs and wants.  Lifting is a common modification and would be useful if needing better ground clearance.  I added larger tires, but did not spring for a full lift kit as our terrain and my useage really does not demand this fix.  I'm totally sold on legacy golf carts.  LOTS of new knock-offs flooding the market just now from overseas....they are lifted, still usually 2X4, but have more power.....and rumor has it, more problems for which you will find scant repair services.  Someday I suspect one or a few of them will finally develop a reputation for quality, but I've not heard of one busting to the front of the pack yet.  The legacy carts have huge infrastructure of repair shops and internet assistance.  Now with newer battery technology (itself seemingly changing by the hour) more and more cart mods are using lithium batteries and more new golf carts offering those batteries standard.  For my climate, I will ease into that tech slowly as cold weather can make lithium battery maintenance a challenge, even as it's improving annually.  My cart is my little mobile workshop and hauling and towing buddy.  I worry a bit about towing if I go lithium and lose all of that battery weight, but other vehicles exist on the property for those tasks.

You can count this as a thumbs up for golf carts!  :-)

My son uses a minivan—transmission is bad but first gear and reverse still work. The run around vehicle at work is a clapped out Jeep Cherokee. Both vehicles were headed to the crusher. Way cheaper than any side by side or Kei truck or golf cart.

I am looking for a legacy golf cart like John’s because I agree that is the best option for the little run around jobs, but other things are higher priorities so far.

And then for those who want a workhorse that can go just about anyplace and have heated comfort.
https://www.roxoroffroad.com/
Not cheap, but quality rarely is.

D Nickols

Just to put in perspective, how far do you go in a day?  A mile? 10 miles?  Could you give us some perspective?

Is this going to be more an off-road vehicle?  Something meant for roads only?  Poor roads?

And how much towing do you see yourself doing?


Eric

Electric golfcarts are amazing for farm work! My folks used the same 2 on the 900+ acer farmstead for 15 years. We were hard on them to. Wed haul dirt for pond digging, firewood retrieval, tow vehicles, pull stumps out, round up critters. The things could pull a full size trailer if you avoided the hills and mud. Then of course us kids would romp on them thru the mud and race them. about every 5 years we had to fix something on the body but the motor always stayed strong until dad sold them to upgrade to his SxS.

Other wise old retired vehicles are cheap and strong. Picking one that runs well has always been a challenge for us. But old trucks and a Jeep Ranger that my mom crashed and messed up the body work were solid options for us. Plus great for teaching kiddos how to drive! All the kiddos learned with the stick shift while raking hay in the Jeep.

For the past few years my husband and I use cheap e-mountain bikes around our much smaller farm with a trailer. Great for taking like 15 gallons of water to the critters and feed deliveries thru rugged off road terrain. Then off to town to go pick up some milk for dinner and take to the trails on the weekend. I agree that if you cant use both feet they are unwieldly and have questionable shocks that tear the bike and you apart if you cant ride it like a horse jockey. We are thinking up upgrading to a good 4x4 four-wheeler for next year as our needs are starting to grow rapidly. The bikes will get repaired but I think we are going to retire them from heavy duty farm stuff.

You can still find quite a few of these for sale.  Unbreakable.

R Scott wrote:My son uses a minivan—transmission is bad but first gear and reverse still work. The run around vehicle at work is a clapped out Jeep Cherokee. Both vehicles were headed to the crusher. Way cheaper than any side by side or Kei truck or golf cart.

I am looking for a legacy golf cart like John’s because I agree that is the best option for the little run around jobs, but other things are higher priorities so far.

Ya, certainly the cheapest way to fly; I did this for a while with a non-roadworthy SUV that I used this way for a while, but it doesn't fit a number of the places I take the trike/quad, and I found it generally cumbersome.. especially with the cast/pegleg combo which is likely to return..

Eric Hanson wrote:D Nickols

Just to put in perspective, how far do you go in a day?  A mile? 10 miles?  Could you give us some perspective?

Is this going to be more an off-road vehicle?  Something meant for roads only?  Poor roads?

And how much towing do you see yourself doing?


Eric

I figure all the 100-200M trips add up to perhaps 5km max per day. Call it 3 miles.

Bad roads is the standard I am aiming for. Rocks, potholes, branches. The quad, or some other quad, can be responsible for longer trips, true offroad, deep mud, and towing over perhaps 400lb.

The towing is perhaps <5% of the time; on a smaller vehicle that might increase, as I can move small qties of bulky items on the quad, that I wouldn't mind using a trailer for behind something else.

thomas rubino wrote:And then for those who want a workhorse that can go just about anyplace and have heated comfort.
https://www.roxoroffroad.com/
Not cheap, but quality rarely is.

For that job and price I would buy a done-up road legal Samurai/Sidekick/Kei truck..

Or https://www.sealion.ca/manta-utv looks pretty great if funds were no issue..

D Nikolls

The reason I ask is about what the ideal power plant would be.  Also what the form factor looks like.  Is it fair to say that whatever you go with, it essentially looks like a UTV of some type?  I am especially thinking about the little “pickup truck” bed in the back.

You like the idea of a battery powered vehicle, and for these circumstances I kinda like it. Considering that you are not really going all that far, I can see you running out and back, plugging in for a top off and running out again.  

You have roads—not perfect roads—but still roads.  In your opinion, does a golf cart work?  Personally I can’t see a golf cart working on a poor quality road.  Small tires, low ground clearance and big ruts and potholes seems like it’s asking too get stuck.

But I don’t know your situation and maybe it works for you.

Can you buy/find/modify some existing UTV and make it electric?  Sounds like an amazing project, but it be an investment to be certain.

Anyways, these ideas just popped into my head.



Eric

Eric Hanson wrote:D Nikolls

The reason I ask is about what the ideal power plant would be.  Also what the form factor looks like.  Is it fair to say that whatever you go with, it essentially looks like a UTV of some type?  I am especially thinking about the little “pickup truck” bed in the back.

You like the idea of a battery powered vehicle, and for these circumstances I kinda like it. Considering that you are not really going all that far, I can see you running out and back, plugging in for a top off and running out again.  

You have roads—not perfect roads—but still roads.  In your opinion, does a golf cart work?  Personally I can’t see a golf cart working on a poor quality road.  Small tires, low ground clearance and big ruts and potholes seems like it’s asking too get stuck.

But I don’t know your situation and maybe it works for you.

Can you buy/find/modify some existing UTV and make it electric?  Sounds like an amazing project, but it be an investment to be certain.

Anyways, these ideas just popped into my head.



Eric

I think a golf cart with a lift and bigger tires would likely do the job.. it wont fit everywhere that the trike can, but otherwise the right older cart is probably the right call. Golf carts are maaaybe tough enough for the terrain.. while UTVs are generally overkill for the job at hand.

I really wish an electric fatbike would work. I think the form factor is not ideal for either cargo or my foot.. but the payload, range, power, and conveniently small size are all very tempting. A longtail style with beefy racks on both sides might be fine.. but these seem to rapidly climb in pricem. A 6-10k C$ bike makes no sense to me. The more standard bike shaped bikes lack cargo space..

The daymak trike has 2 motors probably nominally rated for 1.5kw peak power/500w sustained.. it would be plenty if the motors were set up for more torque and less top speed. This is within the range of dual motor fatbike power ratings...

A garden tractor converted to electric looks like a great option if I had more time to play around with it.

Sam Potter wrote:Electric golfcarts are amazing for farm work! My folks used the same 2 on the 900+ acer farmstead for 15 years. We were hard on them to. Wed haul dirt for pond digging, firewood retrieval, tow vehicles, pull stumps out, round up critters. The things could pull a full size trailer if you avoided the hills and mud. Then of course us kids would romp on them thru the mud and race them. about every 5 years we had to fix something on the body but the motor always stayed strong until dad sold them to upgrade to his SxS.

Other wise old retired vehicles are cheap and strong. Picking one that runs well has always been a challenge for us. But old trucks and a Jeep Ranger that my mom crashed and messed up the body work were solid options for us. Plus great for teaching kiddos how to drive! All the kiddos learned with the stick shift while raking hay in the Jeep.

For the past few years my husband and I use cheap e-mountain bikes around our much smaller farm with a trailer. Great for taking like 15 gallons of water to the critters and feed deliveries thru rugged off road terrain. Then off to town to go pick up some milk for dinner and take to the trails on the weekend. I agree that if you cant use both feet they are unwieldly and have questionable shocks that tear the bike and you apart if you cant ride it like a horse jockey. We are thinking up upgrading to a good 4x4 four-wheeler for next year as our needs are starting to grow rapidly. The bikes will get repaired but I think we are going to retire them from heavy duty farm stuff.

Good info; do you think a beefier fatbike would stand up ok to your current use, especially if a quad did the hardest 10%? I've already got the quad for the heavier tasks, (and a tractor to back that up, and a dumptruck to back *that* up), but even the quad seems like undesirable overkill to basically just replace my feet on a normal day!

Eric Thomas wrote:You can still find quite a few of these for sale.  Unbreakable.

I would love to convert one of those to electric, but price and availablity in Canada look problematic...

For that job and price I would buy a done-up road legal Samurai/Sidekick/Kei truck..
Or https://www.sealion.ca/manta-utv looks pretty great if funds were no issue..
-------------------------------------------------------------------
It is hard to follow the politics but the best technical solution that exists are the Japanese gasoline
4x4 KEI TRUCKS with electric start ..... You should rarely have to charge the battery as they have alternators to recharge the starter battery if driven  a bare minimum amount  regularly.   Currently the only ones that can be imported have to be 25 years old but that is to protect domestic mfgrs..... Trump says he is going to change that.  Leave the Samurai and Sidekicks alone.... they were great cars but now there is no mfgr support and you are stranded.  I have owned a Samurai since 1987 and it sits for 20 years in my basement needing transmission work.    Somehow I just think the KEI trucks would be easier to work on ..... wouldnt it be great if we could get KEI trucks new here in the USA with dealer support ?

Oddly enough, I have an old Snapper riding mower and the mowing apparatus wore out and we removed it and now it is just an electric start gas scooter  with low gearing and big tires  that could be knobbys that get good traction and that is pretty easy to get around in AND it has a trailer hitch for hauling carts and trailers of all sizes.   Riding mowers that dont mow are by far the cheapest haulers available if you keep your eyes open or leave a message at lawn mower repair shops etc.

D Nikolls wrote:........ I think the form factor is not ideal for either cargo or my foot.. but the payload, range, power, and conveniently small size are all very tempting..

I can't recall if you mentioned whether it's your right or left foot that is injured??....   Just to say that I frequently, when just moving short distances, hang my left leg off of the foot platform while driving (right-side steering wheel, right foot for accelerator and braking).  There is something to be said here for an 'open operator station' ..... flat all the way across the foot-well with no 'tranny bump' running down the middle.  This also impacts ATVs/garden tractors vs UTVs, the former of which require you to throw a leg over each time you get on the vehicle.  This may not seem like much when younger but both wife and I appreciate in the senior years have a flat operator's station for frequent on/off tasks.

John Weiland wrote:

D Nikolls wrote:I need something for getting around and moving modest loads......

Initially, in urgent need of a solution that could accomodate a cast & pegleg, I bought a jumbo electric fat-tire trike. .....

As that was dying, in somewhat less of a rush, I bought a Yamaha Kodiak 700. ......

Not a good fit fit for 10-30 trips @ 150 metres each per day, though. Drinks gas, gets condensation in the oil from never getting up to proper operating temp. ......

I really want it to be electric.......

Electric SxS is too much size, capacity, and money......

I've pasted photos of the two vehicles below in other posts, but appropriate to add again here.  I'll get discussion out of the way on the Polaris Ranger EV just because I don't know what your budget is....Polaris may bring back the Ranger EV (electric), but for now they are pushing the Kinetic which as you noted has a hefty price tag.... over $20,000.00 USD.  I bought the Ranger EV shown below in a rare lucky happenstance:  It was a 2012 model with everything working (lead-acid batteries) and was just used by an elderly person at their lake place, so no rough-housing with the rig.  I did not bargain him down on the $5000 asking price as that was well worth it.  It's my wife's machine for doing much of what you describe.....short 5-10 trips around ~20 acres 10 - 15 times per day.  Night feeding of her animals to haul buckets, etc. then into carport (summer) or garage (winter) at night.  Daytime (3 seasons) charging up in carport from solar panel.  Only a few issues due to age....a 48V->12V converter died and needed replacement ($40) and I replaced the aging batteries upon purchase.  It is high-clearance and 4X4 for when we need it which is rare.  Wife loves this machine!

Golf cart:  My baby! ;-)    1990 EZGO Marathon 36V.  Still running lead-acid batteries with intent to go lithium soon.  I garage this for the winter and it is not used due to the severity of our winter climate.  Worth noting:  The batteries are old and probably nearly dead....but HOW I use it makes all the difference.  On our flat terrain and with a solar panel for a roof, I deplete a lot of the charge in short trips, but Mr Sun tops the charge back up to 100% in 10 - 15 minutes *under the use conditions described*.  If the batteries were newer depletion likely would me much less, but recharging to 100% may take longer as well.  Bottom line here is that for the use context described, I've NEVER drained the batteries to where the cart won't move. So now I view a sunny day as my battery-in-the-sky and love the fact that it's never plugged in until winter storage (batteries MUST have charge maintained intermittently in winter to prevent killing them).  The golf cart is a champ...along with Club Car, Yamaha and a few others, these brands have stood the test of time and were well made for many decades.  Mine cost $1500 USD....most I see on the online used markets are around $3000-$6000 depending on model-year and condition.  As you might expect, DEEP knowledge in many forums on the internet for rehabbing legacy golf carts and modifying for various needs and wants.  Lifting is a common modification and would be useful if needing better ground clearance.  I added larger tires, but did not spring for a full lift kit as our terrain and my useage really does not demand this fix.  I'm totally sold on legacy golf carts.  LOTS of new knock-offs flooding the market just now from overseas....they are lifted, still usually 2X4, but have more power.....and rumor has it, more problems for which you will find scant repair services.  Someday I suspect one or a few of them will finally develop a reputation for quality, but I've not heard of one busting to the front of the pack yet.  The legacy carts have huge infrastructure of repair shops and internet assistance.  Now with newer battery technology (itself seemingly changing by the hour) more and more cart mods are using lithium batteries and more new golf carts offering those batteries standard.  For my climate, I will ease into that tech slowly as cold weather can make lithium battery maintenance a challenge, even as it's improving annually.  My cart is my little mobile workshop and hauling and towing buddy.  I worry a bit about towing if I go lithium and lose all of that battery weight, but other vehicles exist on the property for those tasks.

You can count this as a thumbs up for golf carts!  :-)

Those both look like great value to me. Keeping an eye out, but locally it seems most carts are either gas powered, or very new and shiny and overpriced for my purposes - along with being suspect from a durability/servicability perspective, as you note!


It is my left foot that's borked, so pedal controls are fine in most cases. I can, outside of surgery recovery periods, run a truck clutch with the left foot, with some complaints.. but not a manual atv/dirtbike that requires upwards pressure.

Then a kei trick is probably out, the right hand drive and being made for those of short stature would
make it worse than an atv for mounting/dismounting. Besides they are almost as expensive as a side by side these days.

There are different versions of these things out there. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LNCRRmrKKes&pp=ygUVZWxlY3RyaWMgZmxhdGJlZCBjYXJ0&ra=m