Stalled NX6010 with PTO load, will not restart

[JimR]

OK, problem's been narrowed down, the alternator is good, it's showing mid 14's on the voltage, the power is just not making it to the battery. I'm looked at both ends, the connections look decent (the one on the alternator looks like it got a little too hot, it's kind of ugly and doesn't inspire confidence). However, the wire on both ends goes into/comes out of a big wiring trunk line. I'm thinking of just rolling down to the store and getting a whole new piece of wire and doing a direct shot from the alternator to the battery and just capping off the old line. Anyone see a problem with that? Seems reasonable to me, but what do I know. Is there anything fed directly off the line that would be impacted by jumping it out (if so, should I just jump in a new wire and leave that one in place). Usually everything pulls from the battery, so I wouldn't think so, but, who the heck knows anymore!

Did you clean the battery terminals? If so, then pull the battery out and take it to an Auto Zone or some other place where they can do a load test on it. That will tell you if in fact you just have a junk battery and not a bad connection somewhere. YES, I have seen many batteries work great and all of a sudden drop dead on me. This has happened several times in my life with car/truck and motorcycle batteries.

 

[Gary Fowler]

Trace the wiring if possible after it goes into the wiring harness. There might be other connections coming off the battery cable going to gauges (like ammeter) that you would loose if you remove the battery cable.
The hot spot on the alternator connections was /is likely caused by arcing because of a loose connection, Fix it. Any other hot spots visible?
If it started the tractor, then the cable likely is good to the starter and your problem might only be the alternator connection that you stated looked fried. You can buy new cable crimp connections for that, but you may need to buy a crimper if you don't have one.

 

[LittleBill21]

this is a pretty good time to learn how to do a voltage drop test.

 

[gimmodog]

OK, problem's been narrowed down, the alternator is good, it's showing mid 14's on the voltage, the power is just not making it to the battery. I'm looked at both ends, the connections look decent (the one on the alternator looks like it got a little too hot, it's kind of ugly and doesn't inspire confidence). However, the wire on both ends goes into/comes out of a big wiring trunk line. I'm thinking of just rolling down to the store and getting a whole new piece of wire and doing a direct shot from the alternator to the battery and just capping off the old line. Anyone see a problem with that? Seems reasonable to me, but what do I know. Is there anything fed directly off the line that would be impacted by jumping it out (if so, should I just jump in a new wire and leave that one in place). Usually everything pulls from the battery, so I wouldn't think so, but, who the heck knows anymore!

copper is expensive so the engineers will use as small of wire as possible. couldn't hurt to add a new wire. clean up the connection on the old wire and leave it (as long as it is not shorting anything), now you have much more current capacity and the connections/wire should never get hot. after you clean the connections coat them good with a dielectric grease. as long as your doing electrical maintenance disconnect the ground wire at the motor/frame and clean off the rust and coat it with dielectric grease, this could be the only problem anyway. ground connections are a common problem.

 

[Kioti Paul]

40+ years ago I also thought alternators were not electrically protected. I paid a very costly price for my ignorance! Actually I did understand that they were protected by 'fusible links', I just thought that a 10 gauge wire would use a 10 gauge fusible link....very serious mistake. Turned out the 'subject alternator' had an intermittent short internally, and after I replaced a burned out 14 ga link, with a 10 ga link, it was now no longer protected, and the next time it shorted (the car didn't even make it out of the shop!), it burned up the entire wiring loom! It took me two (hard) days to repair that car (on my own dime). I was actually lucky it didn't burn the car up, the smoke was unbelievable!

I am not familiar with a NX6010, but I guarantee the alternator wire IS electrically protected! My DK45 has a 60 amp slow blow fuse (50 amp alternator).

With the engine NOT running, check to see if you have battery voltage at the alternator output terminal. If you don't, then whatever 'protects' the wire has 'blown', and bypassing it (the blown protection) is absolutely playing Russian Roulette with your tractor. If you do bypass the wire, keep the new wire separated from any other wires, and from anything else that might burn.

 

[JimR]

40+ years ago I also thought alternators were not electrically protected. I paid a very costly price for my ignorance! Actually I did understand that they were protected by 'fusible links', I just thought that a 10 gauge wire would use a 10 gauge fusible link....very serious mistake. Turned out the 'subject alternator' had an intermittent short internally, and after I replaced a burned out 14 ga link, with a 10 ga link, it was now no longer protected, and the next time it shorted (the car didn't even make it out of the shop!), it burned up the entire wiring loom! It took me two (hard) days to repair that car (on my own dime). I was actually lucky it didn't burn the car up, the smoke was unbelievable!

I am not familiar with a NX6010, but I guarantee the alternator wire IS electrically protected! My DK45 has a 60 amp slow blow fuse (50 amp alternator).

With the engine NOT running, check to see if you have battery voltage at the alternator output terminal. If you don't, then whatever 'protects' the wire has 'blown', and bypassing it (the blown protection) is absolutely playing Russian Roulette with your tractor. If you do bypass the wire, keep the new wire separated from any other wires, and from anything else that might burn.

I know cars/trucks had fuseable links. I didn't know tractors had them. I know that my 97 Cub Cadet did not have one. Or, if it did, I never saw it anywhere.

 

[Overtaxed]

Update, I think I licked the problem. It was pretty simple, the ring terminal from the alternator to battery (at the alternator end) was just not a good connection. I replaced the terminal with a new one and the wire isn't getting hot anymore and the tractor has been restarting fine. Seems like it was just the terminal feeding the battery was just not up to snuff. And the killing the engine with the PTO seems to have had nothing at all to do with the issue, just coincidental that I happened to stall it when the battery had been discharged enough from not charging to restart.

 

[SGreene]

Thanks for the update.

 

[DieselBound]

I see the issue was just what I figured it would be. Voltage drop tests would get you there pretty quickly.

Connections are always an issue on tractors due to all the vibrations that they are subjected to.

I'll second someone else's comments about crappy connectors on the Kioti. Terminals on my Kioti have rusty bolts (not quite 2 years old) are worse-looking than on my 2008 B7800 (which has about 1,400 more hours on it than the Kioti).

Probably a good idea to always make sure your charging system is operating correctly as the computer might get compromised running on low voltage (I know that doing so with cars can present problems).