John deere GT235 won't start

[beagleboy]

I have a John deere GT235 that always starts no matter what. In the winter I always keep a little maintainer charger on it to keep battery fully charged. Somehow the ignition key got turned on and left on and now it won't fire. If the charger wouldn't have been on it it probably would've just ran the battery down but of course it stayed charged. It was like this with the key on for two days before I noticed this. Doe anyone know what probably happened, such as burning the coil up or something. This has the 18 horse Briggs on it.

[RANDYT]

Leaving the key on shouldn't have any effect on the ignition modules, because there is no power that goes to the ignition modules. There could be a possiblility that something shorted out and sent 12v to the modules, which will burn them out instantly. Find and disconnect the wire coming from the ignition modules and see if you have spark. If you have spark without the wire hooked up, then there is a problem with the tractor wiring, ie bad safety switch, short to ground. If you still don't have spark with the wire unplugged the the module is bad, and I would check very closely to determine if you got a 12v feed to the module. Most likely culprit is a faulty key switch.

To check the key switch, hook the positive lead of a volt meter to the ground wire coming off the ignition module, and the negative lead to a good ground. Turn the key through it positions several times and watch for momentary voltage on the meter. Briggs recommends 50 key cycles to check the key switch.

[beagleboy]

I guess what is throwing me off is it has never caused any trouble ever before ,until the key got turned on with trickle charger plugged in. I haven't checked for spark yet but will in the morning. It turns over and if I choke it very much ,you can smell the gas. I guess the spark needs to be the first thing to check, as far as safety switches, it wouldn't even try to turn over if it was one of those would it? Also I just had it started a few days ago and it started perfect and hadn't been started for a couple months. I'll find out more in the morning, thanks for giving me some tips to looks for.

[beagleboy]

thought I would get back on here and tell you that I did trace it to the safety switch. thank you.

[RANDYT]

thanks for giving us an update. Most people don't respond back and leave us hanging.