(ET) Snow thrower motor

["SWS" <ssawtelle erols com>]

Hello all,

I've been rebuilding my snowthrower and, in the process, rebuilt the motor.
I had not run it before, and figured it could stand new bearings, etc. It
looked its age, but good inside and out, commutator not scored, brushes
good, etc. Well, I decided I better run it before installing it. I plugged
in a dryer cord to the PTO outlet, flipped the switch, and touched the 
leads
to the motor - BLAM! One terminal on the dryer cord disappeared in an big
arc. I guess I should have known better, but I figured a motor under no 
load
wouldn't draw much. It did spin a bit. I then decided to put large lugs on
the wires and bolted them down to the motor, and use the PTO switch to 
start
it up. This time it started to spin, but smoke came out from the hood. A
wire connection to the PTO outlet fried this time. I didn't get a chance to
check the current gauge.
I may just be finding old, corroded weak spots in the wiring, as, up to 
now,
I've only run the mower deck off the PTO. So....

- Do these motors draw that much current under no load?
- Any idea what the armature and/or field resistance should be? I figure,
being a large, series wound motor, it's pretty low. My DVM shows maybe a
couple tenths of an ohm (after subtracting the reading with leads shorted)
- I did check for shorts to the case, and there is none.
- Any other ideas?

TIA,

SteveS
E12S