Talk about highway robbery, itty bitty shaft with teeth cut into it for the Motodrive on the auger in the drive over grain pit, $2000 and a 3-4 week lead time for a replacement. Told em to keep it and bought a torque arm shaft mounted gear reducer and a new 3 phase 7 1/2 hp motor for less than $1400. Had to have a new shaft made for the 15" auger in the pit as the original was too short for the outer bushing of the gear reducer, had to notch the pit wall to make room to change belts. Spent part of Thursday figuring out what to do about a replacement and disassembling the auger trough and original drive head, carried the whole thing into the shop to work on it. Spent all day Friday mounting the gear reducer, building a new motor mount, taking the 10hp motor off a vertical auger and installing the 7 1/2hp on it. Spend all day Saturday reinstalling the trough, auger and motor, then spent most of Saturday night wiring in a VFD to control the speed of the motor driving the auger, worked into Sunday morning trying to track down a random electrical short. A metal chip from drilling the holes for new conduit found it's way down into a relay socket, took about two hours to find that.
Picked corn all day Sunday and today till we got rained out, again.
Installed the rope seal tonight on the door and cleanout door, did the silicone trick. Got the half inch stainless all thread welded in as well to hold the clean out door on. Cut a big washer out of stainless to fit over the 2 inch pipe that feeds the oil and air to the burn pot, the washer holds up a piece of ceramic blanket. Tacking stainless cotter keys to the inside of the burn chamber, slip the ceramic blanket over the cooter key, then a stainless fender washer then spread the cotter key to hold the washer. Us the ceramic blanket since the fire is directed straight up out of the burn pot to keep from boiling water right above the pot.