(ET) crap - started mowing, and lost forward speeds

[Michael S Briggs <msbriggs alberti unh edu>]

Today was the first run with my "new" E15, mowing the yard. After about 5 
minutes or so, I stopped to lift the mower deck (having some trouble with the 
Gator Blades - one of the blades (far right one) keeps getting grass stuck 
under its "wings", causing it to stop cutting the grass well).
	When I got back on the tractor to start driving again, it wouldn't go 
forward. Reverse works fine. When I put move the speed selector forward (any 
speed, and any gear on the transmission), I get a repetitive clicking noise, 
and the needle on the power use gauge hops all over the place ("click" - moves 
to the yellow region and then another click and it goes back to zero, click 
again and it repeats over and over, very fast).
        Any ideas? It had been working fine (other than the blade issue).
	Actually - another update (just went out to try to see if I'd be 
able to just mow the yard in reverse) - reverse seems to not work not 
either. When I move the speed selector to reverse, I get sort of the same 
thing, but more of a buzzing noise than a fast clicking. In both cases the 
Fuel gauge meter drops to zero (which to me indicates that there must be a 
very big current trying to be pulled, although the power use meter doesn't 
peg in the red, perhaps because of the intermittency of the current pull 
(since it seems to switch on/off/on/off very rapidly).

Thanks,
Mike

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Michael S. Briggs
UNH Physics Department
(603) 862-2828
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