Helped a Kubota friend today

[BravoXray]

A close friend called the other day, and the starter on his BX2230 that had been giving him grief for a while, finally got bad enough that it had to be changed before it quit altogether. He is pretty well laid up right now, waiting for knee replacement surgery, so I had told him I would change it for him. This afternoon I packed up the spare starter I have for my BX2230, which is only ~100 serial numbers from his, and went over to his place to get it swapped out. He had the FEL up and the bonnet off, so it only took 15 minuted or so to swap it out. Gave it a test and it fired right up, so I put it all back together for him. He uses that tractor a lot, almost every day for something. I think he has over 3,000 hours on it now.
We went in the house and had a Diet Coke and BSed for an hour or so, then headed back home.
I'll take the starter to the shop the first of the week and get it fixed. It's always good to have a spare on the shelf, as I had to replace it on my BX a while back. I took the cover off the solenoid, and it didn't look bad, so I wonder if the brushes are bad. Tapping on it was the only way it would work most of the time. Whatever is wrong, the shop always does a good job repairing anything I take to them.

 

[greenie]

On my ZD326 (Kubota diesel zero turn) the trigger voltage to the starter solenoid is suspect. Sometimes the starter just clatters other times it works fine. Two years ago I removed the starter and had a shop rebuild it; they said there wasn't anything wrong with it. Sure enough, the starters is doing the same thing now, as is an off brand starter I bought as a back up. This winter I plan to add a better negative to chassis ground and add a second relay to deliver full voltage to the starter's factory trigger solenoid. All the safety switches in between the battery and starter add resistance.
In your case it sounds like the starter was faulty.

 

[RjCorazza]

On my ZD326 (Kubota diesel zero turn) the trigger voltage to the starter solenoid is suspect. Sometimes the starter just clatters other times it works fine. Two years ago I removed the starter and had a shop rebuild it; they said there wasn't anything wrong with it. Sure enough, the starters is doing the same thing now, as is an off brand starter I bought as a back up. This winter I plan to add a better negative to chassis ground and add a second relay to deliver full voltage to the starter's factory trigger solenoid. All the safety switches in between the battery and starter add resistance.
In your case it sounds like the starter was faulty.

On my ZD326 I was having constant starter issues. What I learned was that the starter solenoid was the culprit, even after installing a starter relay to get full battery voltage to the solenoid.
The final solution (no problems since) was installing a heat shield over the starter to keep the exhaust manifold from cooking the solenoid.
I used the heat shield from a zd1211 and had to cut off a piece of the hood hinge to get it to bolt to existing holes. The hood hinge now doesn't stop the hood from opening too far, so I just added a small steel cable between the hood and frame.

 

[dodge man]

Years ago we had a place that rebuilt alternators and starters and were pretty sharp on automotive electronics in general. They’ve been gone for over 30 years, now it’s just replace it and turn in a core.