(ET) Contactor warmth

[Chris Zach <czach computer org>]

Well I mowed the lawn and the neighbor's lawn today with the E20. I got 
the spare contactor in the mail but I haven't installed it. Instead I am 
running on the bad one upside down.

Reverse is lousy, but forward moves much better. After doing both lawns 
I noticed that the lights on my battery monitor were coming on. What a 
delightful device; I could see that one of the batteries was lower than 
the other 5, but that the other five were pretty low too. So I cut power 
back, light went off, and I continued mowing. Another 10 minutes and two 
of the LEDs started to flicker a bit, so I took it in for a charge. The 
"low" batteries were measuring 6.03 volts no load with the rest of the 
batteries reading 6.15 no load.

Nice. Really shows the differences and when to back off to avoid reversal.

After parking and charging I checked the temps in the control box. The 
main contactors were ok, but the one up under the control card (1A my 
guess) was quite warm. I wonder if I need to just replace all the 
contactors, and if so do other people need to do this as well?

Thoughts? Perhaps I should put a voltmeter across it and measure the 
voltage drop across an average contactor.

Chris