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Re: (ET) Fall=Welding time!



Interesting. Well, these are three new blades that were stacked together for a decade plus. It's possible the blade is way out of balance, but I think it's the shaft. How did you straighten it, and did you have to remove the bearing?

C


On 11/14/2021 4:39 PM, Dean Stuckmann wrote:
I had an experience with a bent motor shaft many years ago with one of the skinny motors. I straightened it out, verifying the process by checking it in a lathe.

Things seemed ok for a while but some of the wobble came back. I don't recall hitting anything else with so I’m assuming that the shaft had some metal memory of the bend. Just my thought.

Personally I would replace the motor or armature as soon as you can as the vibration is tough on bearings and could cause the magnet to break free.

With that in mind I purchased a very good blade balancer. https://www.magna-matic-direct.com/products/mag-1000-balancing-instrument.html <https://www.magna-matic-direct.com/products/mag-1000-balancing-instrument.html> I couldn’t believe how much quieter the deck got after I used it. Not cheap but well worth it in my opinion.

Good luck!

Take care,
Dean

On Nov 14, 2021, at 12:36 PM, Chris Zach via Elec-trak <elec-trak cosmos phy tufts edu> wrote:

Took the E20 out yesterday to start on the leaves. The process is deck, tractor, vacuum, trailer with very big bag. The right deck motor has a slight axle wobble but it wasn't the end of the world. So off we went.

Then I noticed it was vibrating a *lot* more so I decided to swap out the armature. Not a biggie, just used a spare I had, took the top off the motor, dropped the armature through the bottom leaving the casing and magnets on, then put it all together. Fired it up, noticed it was still vibrating a bit, then saw another problem.

The bracker that goes around the mower motor to hold it on the deck had broken off in one spot. *Great*. The second spot had a crack in it right by a mounting bolt, but the first one was broken off in two places.

Normally I would pull the motor but these are getting rare. So out came the wire brush to clean up the edges and the collar on the motor, and out came the Elec-Trak welder, also known as the "glue gun".

The welder is pretty good, but you're doing DC stick welding so it is a bit tricky. Went to get my helmet and found that my good helmet (the auto-dimming one) was missing, leaving me with the stupid standard helmet. Which is a pain because you can't see *ANYTHING* until you strike the weld, usually in the wrong location.

So out came the 300 watt portable Halogen light which gives me a very very dim view of the work when I shine it right on the spot to be welded. Stuck some arcs, got used to it, and happily tack welded the flange part back on.

That should hold for leaf season, but once I'm done with that I'm going to put the deck up for repairs and properly re-weld it. Glad to have the welder, it comes in *very* handy for problem projects like this.

Question: Can a motor repair shop straighten a bent motor shaft? Should I pull the bearing or will they do that?

C

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