Problem with 1720 starting

[JFS2295]

With my 1710 I would have issues after the winter when the tractor did not get run that often. The battery was fine. I found two issues.

The first was that the positive post would develop a hard layer of oxide on the surface which took a significant amount of abrasion to get it down to bright clean. The battery does appear to have more electrolyte leakage at that terminal which probably is a factor.

Secondarily, I had a corroded bolt on that clamp that I could not separate from the clamp. Rather then getting a new cable I installed a new clamp. When I cut off the OE clamp to expose the wire to insert into the new clamp you could see corrosion between the cable wire and OE clamp, something not visible before cutting it off. Cleaned up, the tractor starts fine now.

On my newly acquired 1920 the previously owner had jumped a wire to the fuel solenoid to keep it running. When I checked it out I found the the fuse for the solenoid was blown and the connector to the solenoid was damaged and had poor contact. A new solderless terminal and 10a fuse resolved that.

 

[rayikeo2]

When I had that Problem with my 1700, it was the ignition switch. The switch has about 5 internal contacts. They got worn and corroaded enough that they wouldn't make a strong current contact and the starter would only click. I replaced the switch and corrected the problem. It was intermittant like yours and usually worked by applying current to the starter. This problem also affected the cold start heater. I hacked sawed the switch in half and could see the bad contacts. I posted pictures on this forum of the bad switch cut in half.