coldsteelva
Veteran Member
Good morning everyone. Here's something to be on the lookout for so that you don't get caught unaware. My GC1720 is 8 years old and was most recently sitting in my garage where I parked it after the last snowfall. Northern Virginia pretty much had 2 weeks worth of winter this season so it sat for a long while. I keep it on a battery maintainer, so starting should never be a problem and it is still on its original battery; it's been a great workhorse. During the previous snow, it fired right up like always.
Now that winter is completely gone, I went to fire it up so that I could get the blower and bucket off and service up and mount the mower deck: turn the key, click 1-fuel, click 2-glow, click 3-NO STARTER
Break out the wiring diagram and the meter: neutral safety (bypassed-not a geared tractor), seat safety (functional), PTO safety (functional, but I cleaned the dust out), start relay in fuse box (clicking away with ignition cycling) and yet still no start.
I follow the BLUE wire from the start relay down to the start solenoid; it shows no damage and is not chewed or broken. Next I go to remove the plastic connector from the solenoid's spade terminal and as soon as I touched the blue wire, it came out in my hand!
The crimp on the wire was intact, but after 8 years of heat/cold cycling, the structure of the connector failed (think bending a paper clip back and forth; it eventually breaks). I VISUALLY inspected the wire, but never tugged on it and it hadn't physically come out of the connector, but it was no longer making an electrical connection. I simply cut off the crimp, removed the plastic housing, and crimped/soldered a new shielded spade female connector on and installed it on to the solenoid.
Next cycle of the key...fired right up.
Now that winter is completely gone, I went to fire it up so that I could get the blower and bucket off and service up and mount the mower deck: turn the key, click 1-fuel, click 2-glow, click 3-NO STARTER
Break out the wiring diagram and the meter: neutral safety (bypassed-not a geared tractor), seat safety (functional), PTO safety (functional, but I cleaned the dust out), start relay in fuse box (clicking away with ignition cycling) and yet still no start.
I follow the BLUE wire from the start relay down to the start solenoid; it shows no damage and is not chewed or broken. Next I go to remove the plastic connector from the solenoid's spade terminal and as soon as I touched the blue wire, it came out in my hand!
The crimp on the wire was intact, but after 8 years of heat/cold cycling, the structure of the connector failed (think bending a paper clip back and forth; it eventually breaks). I VISUALLY inspected the wire, but never tugged on it and it hadn't physically come out of the connector, but it was no longer making an electrical connection. I simply cut off the crimp, removed the plastic housing, and crimped/soldered a new shielded spade female connector on and installed it on to the solenoid.
Next cycle of the key...fired right up.