Thank you! Yeah I like these old units, they keep on running and might
run forever. We shall see, but for now I have plenty of tractor power to
keep my yard running.

I got the picture of your EGO, got stripped out of the list of course,
but it's a nice unit. Take care of it and maybe in 50 years people will
be posting on how to keep it running....

Next project is assembling a small 30 cell pack for the new E15 here;
I'll have to connect the wires in the rear box together, then do a few
wiring changes to run with a single pack in the front of the tractor.
Then replace the front tires, and decide on putting an additional 60
cells in the back. I may wire this one up with three strings in series
in the front for 12v, then wire the 60 cells in the back as a 24 voltx3
pack so I don't have to change wiring. The hard part is cleaning the
cells, then fitting all of the interconnects....

Chris


On 5/28/2025 10:33 PM, Rod Hower wrote:
>  I always enjoy reading your rebuild stories of the Elec-traks.  I went over to the future and bought an EGO  ZT5207L.  I got a pretty good deal with all of the discounts, but it was still kind of pricy at $4500 for everything including the bagger and tax.  Would have been closer to $7k without the clearance price and military discount (I didn't serve, but my dad was in the Navy and my son is on year 9 going for 20).  Not sure if the picture will attach.
>      On Wednesday, May 28, 2025 at 06:21:55 PM EDT, Christopher Zach via Elec-trak <elec-trak@cosmos.phy.tufts.edu> wrote:
> 
>  In addition to the E15 I also got a pair of E20 motors for my bigger
> Elec-Trak. My current motor runs fine but has a ground fault in the
> armature compensation windings, which is really terrible. It's fine for
> day to day use, but the frame of the tractor does have a ground through
> the winding so it's a disaster if anything else ever develops a ground
> fault (like a deck motor).
>
> One of the motors was probably rebuilt in the past as it is smooth and
> runs fine on 12 volts. The other is more... rustic so I decided to open
> it up, check it out, and pull the bearings.
>
> Getting the pulley off was a job, a previous person had probably used a
> 2 jaw puller and broke one of the pulley sides/sheaves. I put a 3 jaw
> puller on the bottom slot, then cranked it tight and left it for a day
> under tension with some penetrating oil in the set screw hole. Came back
> the next day, used a pair of large flat bladed screwdrivers to "rock"
> the pulley against the motor housing then kept upping the pressure till
> it moved a bit with the screwdrivers. Then slowly cranked it off.
>
> Getting the 4 screws out the back was a challenge, one broke off and the
> other three responded to the loose/tight method of screw removal. Pulled
> off the back, disconnected the wire from the field winding to the
> brushes, and removed the armature. It was the usual level of dirty and
> such so I cleaned it up, then removed the front bearing and then the
> rear with the bearing puller. Pressed new ones on (use a deep socket
> that touches the inner race only and tap on gently after cleaning the
> shafts up with your grinder/wire brush) then cleaned up the shaft and
> commutator bars.
>
> Now it's just a matter of cleaning out the dust in the end caps, and
> putting it back together. Will need a new screw, maybe I'll use a
> stainless one. Either way everything goes back with a thin coating of
> anti-seize so the next guy 50 years from now will have an easy time of
> it. If you're reading this now, I hope you have flying cars and such by
> that time, hello from the past!
>
> Once it's together I'll find time during the summer to drop the existing
> motor and swap one of these in. Then I might put the other motor on the
> E15 junker; I can already see that the E20 has a lot more power than an
> E15 in using this blade to shove stuff around....
>
>
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