Tractor won't start

[Thomas]

Re: Tractor won\'t start

ejb.
Maybe you have a dead spot in your starter?
Can you rotate your engine by hand or other means a half turn than try your starter?
Do you have brushes in your starter,if so check those.

I would be most interested in your out come.

Good luck.

Thomas..NH

 

[_RaT_]

Re: Tractor won\'t start

Since you replaced the battery, my suspicion is that it is the starter. Starters being DC, have brushes. Check the brushes for sure, they can usually be replaced. Knowing the load the starter draws (current or amps) while its cranking tells you a whole bunch about the condition of a starter, but thats where its trickier for you to make the test. Pull it and go to NAPA or even a Kragens and have them test it. To much current draw as detected by an amp meter tells you you have short circuiting within the starter. The condition of the cables is something that is usually quite obvious, clean connections are simple and should be done occasionally anyway. The fact that you can get it going with jumpers tells me you have bad brushes or an armature with "opens" in it. If its the armature, your probably going to have to bite the bullet and get another starter. Your only other possibility is the field coil, but in all likelyhood, thats not it. Rat...

 

[W5FL]

Re: Tractor won\'t start

The normal way shops do it is to charge $50 an hour and then hunt around like you are doing. /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

Start with the battery cables, remove from battery and use tool from auto supply to clean terminal and battery terminal. Be sure the other end is clean and tight. Turn the headlights on and then try to start the engine. If the headlights stay on, the problem is in the low current side of the starter circuit or interlock circuit. Easy to follow through if you have a schematic of it. On my tractor the PTO must be disengaged and the shuttle shift must be in neutral. What ever the rules are for your tractor, check those switches for loose wires or to be sure that you can see the switches being opened and closed as you move the lever. The ignition switch is not out of the question, but can be eliminated by using a test light on the switch output and then on the starter solenoid terminals.

There is a reason the old tractors used a crank to start. The resulting broken arms caused all this mess to be added just to replace a defective arm. /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif

 

[ejb]

Re: Tractor won\'t start

>>The normal way shops do it is to charge $50 an hour and then hunt around like you are doing...

Thats what I was afraid of...and they will probably just keep on replacing things until something works to! which is why I posted the question here and got many useful suggestions to try.

 

[TomG]

Re: Tractor won\'t start

Now it sounds like you've got the opposite problem. It works, but you know there's something wrong and now you can't make it stop working. That's the other half of the intermittent problem nightmare I remember from my tech days in the Air Force.

As I recall the approach was: Blow air and use contact cleaner on everything. Take off each contact inspect, pull the terminals a bit and use contact cleaner. That's seems to be what you're doing. The object here is to either completely break it so you can find the problem or find that it still works and then force yourself to forget about it.

There is a testing approach that seems more scientific but often takes a lot of time and produces no conclusions. The approach would be something like taking the hot wire off the starter-motor and jumping the starter switch. A voltmeter on the starter wire should show battery voltage. Wiggle individual wires and connections and see if the voltage drops out any place. A jumper probably shouldn't be left on for very long at a time.

Of course, the testing approach can turn into the 3rd half of the tech nightmare (teching nightmares come in three halves). To illustrate: I used to work in a BSA motorcycle shop. We had a bike come in that was blowing fuses. Of course, we couldn't blow a fuse in the shop. Everybody had a go at it--everything wigglable was wiggled. We took it for test drives and it would blow fuses, but not in the shop. Finally we noticed that the only time a fuse blew is going downhill while applying the rear (but not the front) break. We eventually found a short in the wiring harness where it went over the steering crown. Applying the rear only brake shifted the weight forward, spread the forks forward and caused a short. The forks didn't spread if the front brake was also applied.

Duh, I think we each had about a half-week's work in it and got about 10 cents an hour. Unlike most shops, the owner didn't charge customers for much time mechanics spent figuring out things.

What I'm saying is that if your problem has a cause like that, you're not going to find it easily. The best approach might be to either live with it or get rough and hope you cause the problem to become permanent. At least you got past the approach of first choice used by Air Force techs and typical mechanics. Just start replacing big pieces one at a time and hope one piece contains the real problem.