John Deere 445 lawn tractor.

[Tim6696]

I have an older JD 445 lawn tractor and all in all it has been a great machine. 2 years ago I had one of the spark plug selinoids replaced. Yesterday I went out my last mowing of the season and seems I am only running on 1 cylinder... very low to medium power. I changed both plugs and still no improvement. Could it be its time to change the other selinoid?? Is there a way to check if its bad?

[mfreund]

Remove the spark plugs and crank it over and make sure both cylinders have spark.

[Tim6696]

Thank you mfreund... but help me out here alittle (i am not a mechanic at all).... how will I know if their is spark?? And if I do, what does that tell me or not tell me? Sorry I sound so ignorant.

[kensnelling]

Thank you mfreund... but help me out here alittle (i am not a mechanic at all).... how will I know if their is spark?? And if I do, what does that tell me or not tell me? Sorry I sound so ignorant.

Not to be rude or insulting, but if you have no idea how to do basic trouble shooting. or how to interptete the results you get, you might be better off loading up your mower and taking it to the shop.

However, to answer your question, you would remove your spark plugs, and check for a spark between the gap. There are also jumpers you could plug in between the coil wire and the plug that will also indicate whether or not you're getting spark, but not the quality of the spark.

Assuming you have spark, you'll need to be able to tell if you have good spark. If you have no spark you need to be able to test the COIL (a solenoid is a totally different device), coil wire, etc and know what the results of those tests tell you.

Other possibilities are a tight valve, low compression, fuel delivery problems and so on. Unless you have the proper equipment on hand and manuals to help you interprete the results you get from your testing, you can easily spend more trying to do your own repairs than if you just pay a shop to do it.

Just for reference, I charge $65 an hour plus parts to do small engine repairs. Just to diagnose a bad coil I'd be using about $150 worth of tools and test equipment. I am guessing that you have some basic hand tools, but do you have a multimeter?

I'm all for do-it-yourselfers, I'm one myself, but there are times it's better to hand it over to the pros.

Ken

[Briana03]

Welcome to TBN

I moved your thread to the John deere Lawn & Garden forum.