Once again my brother had problems with his E-60. At least once a year he has had trouble. He was on his third pump motor. The first time the carbon brushes were worn out. The second time, two of the springs that press on the carbon brushes were snapped. This time, the motor started turning really slow. The solenoid was just clicking, then the motor would buzz slowly moving the blade. I told him it was a ground problem. Took off the motor, and cleaned the aluminum surfaces to get the white crust off. Held the motor against the lift arm bolt, he hit the switch and the motor spun no problem. Turned the pump shaft with my fingers, no resistance. Put the motor back on, did the same thing.... click and then buzz. Took the motor off again, and put an extra ground wire under one of the bolts that hold the motor on. Didn't help. After 3 hours of standing in the driveway %*#@%@!%*# with his motor, I whacked it with a pair of channel locks. Motor started working normal again. I told him I wanted to weld a nut on the motor body, to put a good ground wire on it. He left to go plow. I then went to put the plow on my truck. Opened the hood to check fluids, and my battery was laying on the inner fender. The little hold down clamp was gone! Had a spare in the garage, put it on, topped off the radiator, and put my plow on. Went to plow. Did two parking lots, took a long time getting up the frozen hardpack under the 12". At one lot, I plowed in a Mercedes that some idiot left there. I did it slowly to get plenty of snow under the car. The car had no snow on it, so it was clear someone parked it there after the snow stopped. With 12", not plowing the car in would have made it extrememly difficult to plow the lot. Got a call from my brother, he had to hit the motor a few more times while plowing to get it to work but he was getting his lots done. The next day, my brother called me after leaving the Meyer dealer. He got a new motor, and a new touchpad. He said the touchpad just came out. The motor, came out recently too, and was different. It had the + terminal on the motor, and 2" away from that, it has a - terminal! The guy told him they had so much trouble with bad grounding, that they redesigned the motor. He said aluminum is a bad conductor to begin with, so this solves the grounding problem. The new touchpad, is a lemon. It has an "overload" feature, that shuts off the pad. My brother said just raising the blade, overloaded it. He said he had to turn the pad on and off more than he had to move the blade, so he went back to the dealer. They tried 3 of those new touchpads, and all of them "overloaded". The dealer had one of the old touchpads in stock. They put that on, and it worked fine. The dealer said he wouldn't be stocking that new pad anymore, since it sucks. My brother asked him about the new Aggressor plow, and he had it in the catalog there. It's called the AG-8. They also make it in 9' (AG-9) and 11' (AG-11). It has a really steep curl to the moldboard. The moldboard is 33" tall. The dealer had no pricing info on it yet, but was going to call Meyer, and get back to my brother with prices. He said we would need the Aggressor moldboard, and the Aggressor A frame. We could use our existing angle rams, mounting frames, and power packs. I have a feeling the Aggressor has 12" angle rams, so our 10" rams won't work, but we'll see. So if you have an E-60 pump, you might want to get this new motor. You DON'T want to get the new touchpad! ~Chuck
Chuck, Isn't it funny the way that problems appear when you need the equiptment! Glad everything is working out for you.
Whenever you are under pressure and something NEEDS to be done, something WILL go wrong. It happened to me last Thursday. We had an ice event and my V-box quit. It needed a belt adjustment. I moved the engine to do so and knocked a hole in the bottom of the engine and oil started draining. There was a hole that had rotted into the bottom of the engine sump. So I cleaned it up and put epoxy on it to hold it until I could permantly fix it. I had a friend salt some of my stuff while I got the rest. So, later that day I fixed the problem for good...I bought a new HI-WAY v-box from Lesco.
touch pad Chuck I feel your brothers pain. My fisher stopped working a couple of times. I think the hand controller was to blame because when I shut it down and then turned it back on it would work fine for a short while and then stop working again. I even tried replacing the internal fuses with the same result . I'm not a big fan of computers on plows!!
It's obvious! When they designed the touch pad they incorporated a "Critical Need Sensor" in the circuitry. The greater the need the more often it will crap out. Locate the sensor and patch a wire from the terminal marked "fubar" to a good ground on a spare (shot) engine. Throw the engine in the deepest water you can find. That works for me.
Man,I guess Im lucky,(Ill go pat my fishers on the back of the blade tonight).I should buy a spare motor now i guess,Ive had no problems with my Fishers-only thing happened was one base lug came loose when i was finshing up the last storm-The .80 cent O-ring got torn a little when it came loose-.that plow is 7 yrs old-and has had a lot of use.All my Fishers have a ground on the motor.
I know this is a little off the topic of the thread, but reading about equipment problems during the storm reminded me of my fun back in December. Only real storm in this area so far, I plow with a 2wd so the winch on the back is rather important. You guessed it - it died. Of course, only AFTER I had gotten too close to the ditch beside the lot I do, (my fault) slid in and buried it. I spent some time trying to get it work, gave up, and got a chain comealong out of the shop. (Good thing I plow where I work!) After a strenuous workout, I finally dragged it free. All this time the blizzard is blizzing and the drifts are getting deeper. About the time I finally get mobile, the snow tapers off. Wallowed through the drifts to home, spent some more time in the garage trying to get things working, gave up and yanked it off. Rooster, you sure are right! Big problem appeared and I needed the equipment. There is a happy ending, turned out that the motor was repairable. The armature got sent out for rewinding, now I've got my "4x4 substitute" back working! 1975 GMC C-35
I forgot to mention one part of the story from my previous post: being as this happened in mid December, one of my co - workers immediately came up with a title for my experience: "The Winch That Stole Christmas". It's funny now, but at the time... 1975 GMC C-35
Grounding ; etc. Chuck....first, can't believe what happened with your battery....you must really be pre occupied this season. As for the E-60 grounding problem.....1st...take off the ground wire setting the ground bolt aside. Make sure it has a STAR washer on it; if not, get one for it. 2nd...clean the bolt hole with a small diameter plastic kitchen type bru sh...nothing metal. Spray with WD-40 and let dry.3rd...Polish the terminal until it really shines. Then take a wire brush and make a couple of verticle and horizontal passes with it. 4th...clean the bolt with a wire brush and then spray with WD40 and let dry. 5th, and most important: Coat the terminal and the bolt with regular automotive grease...a nice gob is what is desired. 6th...insert the bolt through the terminal and rebolt to the pump. I had the same type electrical problems. The grease is a good conductor. The brush marks allow the grease make a better contact. Try it, and if grounding the pump is the problem, that WILL fix it. I do ALL my battery contacts on ALL our vehicles that way.I have no garage, and all vehicles are parked outside are exposed to the elements. It gets cold here too...sometimes 20 below. They always start. I re-do each vehicle every year. By the way, the grease will cut your corrosion problem, by 75%.
