riding lawn mower lights

   / riding lawn mower lights #1  

tpolley

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Mar 9, 2009
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why is it that all the lights on my riding mower go dim when i idle the engine and get brighter as i increase the throttle? are they not hooked to the battery?? are they hooked directly to the magneto or whatever and not run off the battery at all?
 
   / riding lawn mower lights #2  
That use to be a common problem with cars before they switched from generators to alternators. Probably your battery is marginal or your voltage regulator is set low.
 
   / riding lawn mower lights
  • Thread Starter
#3  
it's got a new battery as of last month.
 
   / riding lawn mower lights #4  
Most of the new riding lawn mowers I've been around don't run the lights off the battery. They run them off the generator/starter on the engine. Should the engine stall for a reason, the lights will go out completely.
 
   / riding lawn mower lights #5  
Your tractor uses a combination of stator/ battery to operate the lights. When your idleing the battery is suppling the voltage for the lights. When you rev up the engine than the stator picks up the slack giving the necessary voltage to give you bright lights. You machine probably still has the 3 amp stator which in later models they changed to 15 amp to handle the electrical loads. If you run your tractor at idle long enough with the lights on eventually the battery will go dead. It's an annoying problem but it is what it is. Hope that helps alittle.
 
   / riding lawn mower lights #6  
On a lot of these cheap mowers you have two circuits in there. One is only for the headlights and the other is a charging circuit for the battery. Not sure what the purpose of that is. But I would imagine its due to not needing a voltage regulator then. And most charging circuits on mowers are just for a trickle charge of the battery it doesn't actually charge like a car or battery charger can.

Steve
 
   / riding lawn mower lights #7  
why is it that all the lights on my riding mower go dim when i idle the engine and get brighter as i increase the throttle? are they not hooked to the battery?? are they hooked directly to the magneto or whatever and not run off the battery at all?
Rite.
Most of the box store tractors work like that.
work like that I believe..
 
 
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