(ET) help

[Tickners <tickners valinet com>]

My tractor just died while blowing snow. We got a ton and I didn't get far
at all before it died. I did some testing and initial R&R. My main
disconnect was acting funny previously so I pulled that and cleaned it up,
works better now. The lift and PTO still work fine.

What happens is when I put it in forward the L contactor just clicks. It 
has
36V at the big lugs and when I put it in forward the small lugs get about
12-15V like the voltage supplied to the coil is rapidly switching. When it
first died it smelled hot and I stopped to check the blower motor and drive
motor with my hand. Then it would kind of edge forward in reverse and edge
in reverse in forward, now it does nothing. Since it's dead in my driveway
with about 16" of snow around it I tried jumping the L contactor coil from
the big lug to the small lug, just to see if I could get the thing to move
out of the way and it does the same thing, clicking. I thought maybe the
contactor coil had partially shorted so I swapped the L contactor for the 
2A
contactor and it still does it.

Now the fine print, I have an E15DA, and it seems like the wiring doesn't
always match my shop manual. To compound that the PO had the reverse relay
die so he replaced that with a DPDT toggle, which has worked fine for the
past 2 years. So to go in reverse you flip the toggle and push the speed
control forward. Also, the brake switch and seat switch have been bypassed,
and he told me that he had disabled the 1st 2 speeds since he thought the
resistors up front just wasted battery power. I agree and using low gear on
the transaxle works just fine, but I have never sat down and figured how he
did that.

Thanks for any help