My near new Electric Mower is Down, Bringing up the Larger Issue of reliability

Some 18-20 months after I bought it, less than 50 uses due to lack of warm weather growth getting my lawn cut once a month. If it had an hour meter as with the professional television equipment at the time I started my career, I'm sure it would show less than 20 hours of use. If I knew a shop around here to take it to. . . .Well, never mind that, I don't. So how do I fix it AND assure that it won't be down again less than 20 hours later?

Mine has the 20" blade, but they seem to have reduced it to 18".

http://www.lowes.com/pd_195614-95404-25143_0_?productId=3187391&Ntt=task+force+electric+mower&Ntk=i_products&pl=1&currentURL=/pl...$Ntt=task force electric mower

DaveW mentioned in a post where someone wanted to overclock the motor that he just wanted a bit more torque so it wouldn't bog down. Yeah, my pathetic lawn bogs down this 12 amp plugin. It was bogging down when it gave a new sound, as smoke began to pour out. Once I had it apart, the open face motor was full of old grass. (No filter on the grille, gotta do something aobut that.) But the real problem came from this little square that I'm hoping one of you experts can give me a proper idea about. If I can get it at the electronics store it should be quicker and cheaper than direct from Task Force. Which I'm reading has a bad reputation with their 800 number. (Imagine my surprise.) But I want to know if there's such a thing as getting a bigger, tougher bridge rectifier that might hold up better, or do I jsut need the same thing and some luck?

Once I had the hood up and tested it, there were two geysers of electric flame coming out of the part. I'm sure there was no black on the wires from the factory. The motor was still trying to run, I assume it will be fine with a new part, but why did it let go?

http://www.alliedelec.com/Search/ProductDetail.aspx?SKU=2660047&gclid=CPSj-8Kp9qMCFQT5iAodox5e3g

I see people trashing anyone who'd buy a $150-200 mower and expect it to work, but doggone that's plenty to pay for something that would be reliable. Look what you can get gas mowers for. The Briggs and Stratton engine hasn't much changed since the 1930's, in my small engine repair class we put modern parts onto an ancient engine and it worked fine. My neighorhood lawm mowing service as a kid was born of me buying a mower that was older than I was and fixing it myself with a total startup (In more ways than one) cost of pocketchange, and I used that mower at our house, then at my house, for 20 years. That same technology went into the brand new mower my Dad bought out of some embarassment at me using my mower at the house, but his never worked right and may have mowed the lawn all of 20 times for all the fixing of it he did. His suffered from overengineering: the B&S ran just fine, but those extra bolts just kept coming loose. I don't think that's the case with this electric, noone has accused the Chinese of trying too hard that I've ever heard of.

So I'm thinking all these hate posts against the Task Force are probably much the same idea: Perfectly good parts are not being used properly in building it. Mine has not broken physically as the others have, I guess I handle it better, eh? But I'm reading about the same fire and smoke, too. Could grass literally getting down inside trigger this? If not, what might? I definitely need to screen that without cutting off the airflow. But if you want people to use these things, they're going to have to last. Especially since there are no shops to fix them, nor are most people the hearty pioneers you see here who'll deal with their little electric on the prarie. (We need a picture of Reikiman wearing the hat and suspenders a la Michael Landon in a certain TV show.)

I think LG, who like to nickname themselves 'Live is Good,' need to get a few engineers back to work on this mower. Dang, I have their washer and dryer, too.