(ET) Speaking of tractors, lift failure

[Chris Zach <cz alembic crystel com>]

So last week the front lift motor on the E20 started blowing fuses. 
Annoying, it's in the 90's this week and fairly humid but it looked like 
the motor was shorted or something so today I dropped the lift to figure 
it out.

Got the motor off and sure enough the brushes are worn all the way. 
Might have other problems, we'll see but in the meantime I just grabbed 
a spare motor out of my box (I rebuilt a number of them a few years ago) 
and put it on the tractor. Tested it, all works, put the lift on, back 
in business.

The only different thing I do is run the lift motor at 36 volts: It has 
more power, lifts the snowblower faster, and since it is a series motor 
as you increase the voltage you increase the armature and stator fields 
together. It also can do the same amount of work with half the amperage 
which is nicer on the wires.

Only issue is it can double the power at a full 30a which might rip the 
deck apart or something so what I do is run it with a 15a fuse. That way 
if it does overload the fuse just goes blammo.

It's been a long time since I replaced the lift motor, so I'll fix it 
this fall when it is cooler and put it back into the rotation. Could be 
10 years now that I think about it. Hm....

C