Post 2009 Upgrade/Service - Crawling LB3500 Another failed blade motor?

[evblazer]

End of last season before I sent my 3500 for the early season recall/upgrade I posted the following elsewhere.

August 15"Chopper II (my 3500) just started doing this tonight after I found him with a blade error and reset it.
After syncing the first time he did the inch ahead, jerking, jet forward and then would turn and repeat the process. I went over and picked up the rear handle and noticed the rear display wasn't displaying at all.
After reseting chopper will sync, spin around and 'E03' blade error.
I have not sent in for the 3500 recall yet but maybe it's time and i'll have them replace the motor at the same time."

August 16 "Went out and cleaned off the top of the motor and vacuumed out the bot then turned it on. After synching it crawled for about a foot then took off and bumped into something and it started heading back for the charge port. So I shut it down and noticed the blade spinning on it's own inertia for at least 15 seconds. *sigh* I'll wait to see if it comes out in a few hours but it looks like the blade motor is a goner."

So last night I get home and found chopper stuck under a pine. I reset it and whacha know it inches ahead, jerks forward, inches ahead, jerked forward. At the time The blade was not even running at all.  :'(

I was almost gonna go for the upgrade but I unfortunately still haven't gotten more than a month or two of mowing before I needs parts or ship it back for repair with my 3500(?)  or the original evolution I got.  So the current 600$ upgrade doesn't do anything for the motor could any of the changes help out the motor?

[evblazer]

I forgot to pause chopper after the last reset when I put him in the charging bay and he went out on his own. Found him with about 30ft of wire wrapped around the right wheel saying out of border which he was by about 10ft. Weird how he somehow carried the zone with him and was only stopped because he knocked into something and turned.
He still does the crawl, burst of speed, crawl burst of speed with the blade motor barely spinning but it will continue to spin well after the emergency stop is pushed.

Also found the bumper would be a welcome addition. Choppers front shell has two 4" cracks due to bumping into things. The bumper would hopefully reduce this?

[evblazer]

Got a reply from vishal.
Tried the service menu but I found no option to disable the safety handle. The normal menu allowed me to verify the sensors were disabled. Vishal thought grass on the handle might make it think someone was touching it.
Phase II was holding the - button while the mower was on to disable the motor. Doing that had the motor spin down and the mower moved around just find as reported by another owner when their motor went.

Checked statistics and I have just about 300 hours on the new blade motor after last years recall/upgrade.

New motor is on it's way. Well if they only last 300-500 hours and each replacement starts a new warrantee they'll be doing alot of shipping. Based on another thread I wonder if they are just swapping/refurbishing the brushes and sending them out.

[jzawacki]

Good question, keep an eye on the cosmetics when it comes in and see if you can tell.

[evblazer]

The broken old motor looks brand new from the top but I haven't removed it yet so maybe there are some signs of age somewhere. I had an old brushed motor I just sold with thousands of hours of hard use on it and blow away the brush dust and it looked like new.
Maybe I should etch a link to a tinyurl of this post and see where it turns up. 

[evblazer]

Metal top of the motor where the encoder is looks a little more scratched up then my motor but not sure that means much. The wires on the encoder look much better than mine though.
I don't think I'm going to pull it apart because if they cleaned it at all I don't think I'll be able to tell the difference. So it doesn't obviously look used.

When I picked up the mower and brought it into the workshop I removed the motor and found it was pretty warm. It hadn't been running for a couple weeks so hopefully it was just from the heat of the sun but ouch. Not burning hot but almost too hot to hold onto for long hot which can't be good. I'll have to check on the current motor tonight when I get home. Mower is working now but on pause because of the new issue of getting stuck. The mower seems like it getting caught up just running around the lawn doing turns or staying straight. Compass is disabled and the nose of the cover looks like it is getting caught and the bot keeps pushing and either it gets deflected from it's path or digs a hole and keeps digging and digging and digging. Maybe the added height from the upgrade if still available will help with this. Crappy lawn why can't we live in a townhouse or something. oh yeah dogs.  

Edit: Getting caught/whole digging was caused by casters failing as noted in another thread.