Jim might still have some of the square spacers. I once successfully
made one from the square head of a giant zip tie, but the one Jim sold
Pete was better.
--Charlie
On Sat, Dec 28, 2019, 5:40 PM Chris Zach <cz alembic crystel com>
wrote:
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
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