(ET) Electric Ox snowblower working again

[Ken Olum <kdo cosmos phy tufts edu>]

Thanks very much to everyone who offered help and ideas last spring
about getting my snowblower working again.  Here's what happened:

The problem was that the motor shaft was badly worn at the front
bearing.  I took it to my local welder who offered to build up the
shaft, and then I could take it to the machine shop to have it ground
down to the right diameter again.  I went ahead with this plan, but when
I got to the machine shop, it turned out the shaft was bent, and there
was no way to fix it.  I don't know if this happened during welding or
before.  This motor had a very hard life.

So then I bought a Motenergy ME1007 through EVDrives.  This motor is
wider and not as long as one I had before, and has mounting holes in
different places.  I had the machine shop redo the mounting system and
also remount the motor that rotates the auger to get it out of the way
of the new drive motor.

I called Bercomac, the maker of the snowblower before conversion.  They
told me the first driven shaft in the snowblower should rotate 3600 rpm,
which was the same as the new motor, so I coupled them 1:1 with a belt.
I don't know the rpm of the old motor, but it had about 2:1 reduction.
The result of this is that the snowblower runs much faster, and throws
the snow much further.  Naturally it also uses more energy to throw the
same amount of snow.  On the other hand, in cases where I only have to
throw the snow once now, when before I had to throw it twice, it uses
less energy.

So far I'm pretty happy, but we've only had a couple of fairly minor
snowstorms.  It's possible that in the end I'll want to reduce the speed
somewhat.

I finally managed to get in touch with Electric Tractor, Inc., who made
the Ox.  (Well, I think this is really the successor company that bought
the first one of bankruptcy.  They are trying to get back in business
and claim to have a prototype of their new product.  I'll post if
there's progress.) They had not kept the information about the original
motor, but they did confirm that the snowblower I have is the prototype,
and no others were ever built.

                                        Ken