(ET) Small fire and motor overload

[Chris Zach <cz alembic crystel com>]

Man I am glad I fixed the brakes. Today I went up on the hill behind my 
house to pick up some fallen trees. Drove up the 20-30 degree path, 
picked up 3 5 foot length logs, drove back down and to the house no problem.

Decided to try 6 logs. Much heavier, but since they were at the top of 
the hill it wasn't too big a deal, it's a downhill trip with the load 
and I can just put it in L and go down the hill.

Well, got towards the bottom of the hill and smelled smoke. And saw 
smoke coming from under the tractor. About this time the motor cut out 
and I got to use the brakes to stop the tractor and load. Good news: The 
new brake kit allowed me to finish the trip down (in LL, no motor) and 
figure out what had happened.

When I checked underneath there was a small fire by the brush studs. It 
was then I remembered that the top spacer was broken so I used a short 
length of auto coolant hose to act as the spacer. Apparently the motor 
side had gotten hot, the lower washer loosened, the coolant hose caught 
fire, and the motor shorted itself out.

Dragged it back in with the gas tractor (sans load) and pulled the 
motor. Sure enough the rear stud was burned, so for now I took the stud 
and insulating spacers out of the E15 motor and fixed the E20 motor.

Will test tomorrow, but it did point out one interesting issue: When 
going downhill you are in regen mode and the motor is working just as 
hard to charge the batteries. Add a half ton of logs behind you and it's 
a pretty significant load.

Speaking of which, is there a source for those insulated washers and the 
square spacer? I'm assuming they are high temp plastic or resin to hold 
up in the motor.

C