I traded in my gas lawn mower for an electric and have never looked back. Unfortunately it can't handle my hillside tall grass clearing needs. I once tried to get a gas brushmower on the downslope (good thing I had a safety rope) and will never do that again. Weed wacking is non fun as well.

I want a Spring project so I've decided to build a lightweight brushmower. I'm assembling my parts (all aluminum so far) but have a question. What size should the motor be? It looks like the blade on my lawnmower is mounted directly to the shaft, so I'll be doing the same. The motor will be the heaviest component by far.

Most of the brush is just tall grass, weeds, not too thick (no trees or saplings). I probably don't need the electric power equivalent of a briggs gas motor, but would rather have too much, than not enough.

Any help would be appreciated.

While I know you are discussing mowers, have you considered doing a layout with ground cover to eliminate all the mowing in that area

I have considered groundcover, but have to clear it this season regardless. I prefer native, drought/fire resistant species so I have to do some homework.
I also thought about getting some goats! Until then I have to finish my mower.

What is the steepness roughly.. more than 45 degrees?. a while back a friend had a hill that was just about 45 degrees and got himself a safety harness and a winch to strap himself to his four wheeler and used a regular push mower.. going down the hill was easy going up he used the winch.. looked silly but holy crap it worked well...

I'd say it's almost 45 degrees. It's not a massive lot, just enough to not to want to weedwack ever again. I don't have a 4x4, so my lightweight brushmower should do the trick. I'm just a little stumped when it comes to translating horsepower into electric motors. I'm going to run a cord behind me just like an electric lawnmower would, no batteries. At least that's the plan.

Any help on why electric craftsman lawnmower just stopped running

Not sure if you have a cordless or corded electric lawnmower, but they're not too different I'd imagine.

I just opened up an electric lawnmower that "just quit" after 6 months, for my project. There are very few parts inside, so I started with the handle. Inside the handle is a switch that runs the mower when it's activated by the lever. On the model that I was working with the parts inside the handle checked out OK (by a guy at a local electronic supply store). Turns out the little cord you plug your extension cord was bad. Strange.

I have a b&d model and it doesn't have the "little cord", so if I were you I'd start by checking to see if it's still under warranty first. If so a pro can fix it. Then, find the manual, or download it online. First thing I did was to remove the blade to make it safe, in case I got it going accidentally.

Then I'd open the top and see if anything looks fried. When I took the top off the broken mower it had a surprising amount of dead grass and stuff inside. Not so good for flammable material to be so close to a hot motor. You might get lucky and spot something like a blown fuse. Then I would take the handle apart slowly so you can remember how it all goes back together (watch out for flying springs). Who knows, you might get lucky and it might be some kind of loose connection between the prongs where you attach your extension cord to the mower. If not test (or have tested) the electronic components inside the handle. That's as far as I had to go. Like I said, you'll see how few parts (that can cause it to stop running) are inside. If it's cordless, there'll be a couple more, but not many.

Hope this helps and let me know if you get it running again.