(ET) looking for someone to help with snowblower "reconversion"

[Ken Olum <kdo cosmos phy tufts edu>]

Hi, all.  Sorry if you get this twice.  I'm sending it both to the New
England Electric Auto Association list and the Elec-trak list.

I would like to hire someone with more knowledge and skills than I
have, to help fit a new motor onto my Electric Ox snowblower.  If I
could get a motor like the one that failed, I could just replace it,
but I have been unable to identify the motor, in spite of taking it to
two electric motor shops.  (Naturally there is no nameplate.)  So
probably it will need to be replaced with something different, which
means figuring out what is needed and making an adapter to fit the new
motor to the old mounting system.  You could think of it as a
"reconversion".

The snowblower is a Bercomac 700210-0.  The motor is face-mounted to a
plate that can be moved to adjust belt tension.  The mounting is smaller
than a NEMA 56C mounting, which is what I suppose I should replace it
with.  The shaft has a pulley driving a V-belt, and after that I think
everything is the original Bercomac unit.  The old motor is a brushed
permanent magnet DC unit, connected to 48V of batteries with no control
system except on and off.  It draws something like 4kW when heavily
loaded, though I'm sure this is far above its power rating.  The old
motor weighs 28 pounds.  It failed due to wear on the shaft where the
front-end bearing goes, allowing the rotor to get out of position and
jam.

Since it is summer, I'm not in a rush to get this fixed, but it would be
nice to do it before next winter.

If you're interested in helping with this and not too far from 
Sharon, MA, send me an email at kdo cosmos phy tufts edu.

Thanks.

                                        Ken