Kioti 3054 No Power Issue

Coryduhon · Nov 1, 2017

MichiganIron said:
If you can't jump the starter across the posts, and the starter runs directly off battery, it would say that the starter isn't either powered or grounded. If you have 12v from the starter post to frame, it would tell you that frame is carrying ground. You may have a short directly to ground in the system, or a ground that you can read with a meter, but won't handle a LOAD. Remember that continuity needs to be checked with a load. You can read good continuity, or even good voltage, but they could both die under a load. Use a good jumper cable and run the jumper from the batter positive to the positive post on the starter, check for power.

At least it sounds like your issue is main power, and main power or ground with a LOAD. Start bypassing with jumpers until you can isolate to either a main power or main ground under LOAD. Your PTO is mechanical engagement, and the safety switches don't effect dash power. If you have no dash power, your problem is up front.

By the way, LOAD test the battery...

I took the starter and solenoid off 2 nights ago and hooked it straight up to a battery and it spun and engaged correctly. Last night I did exactly what you are saying. I took a fresh battery and put it right next to the starter. I had the tractor battery totally unhooked. I took a jumper cable wire and hooked the positive straight to the starting side of the solenoid and the ground straight to the battery grounded on the bolt head of the starter. The starter did spin, BUT for some reason it never engaged the flywheel.......??? I could hear it spinning but never heard it or felt it engage the flywheel...

ritcheyvs · Nov 2, 2017

Well, it sounds like a bad battery cable although that doesn't explain draining the new battery overnight. Battery cables on these things can fail internally (inside the insulation) such that they look fine to the eyeball and even pass voltage if there is no actual load. You might try bypassing the factory battery cable with a big jumper cable: for example connect battery + to the big starter terminal and see if that fixes it.

The reason the starter didn't engage the flywheel is that you only powered the actual motor, not the solenoid (I think). The solenoid serves as a big relay to send currentto the starter motor but it also forces the starter pinion gear to engage the flywheel.

DieselBound · Nov 2, 2017

Did you meter out the fuses? I won't recite a recent adventure I ran across, but it came down to a bad fuse (despite them LOOKING OK, one was NOT).

Jumping the starter, you didn't jump to the solenoid (which connects up to the starter motor as well). But, this is all rather moot because it is pretty unlikely that your starter decided to die (no way for it to have gotten tangled up in any PTO operation).

It's possible that this problem was lurking before your PTO incident. I'd be looking for any disruption to wiring. If you aren't hearing the solenoid for the injection pump clicking then it's not any safety switches (I believe; fuel shutoff solenoid will activate and then the state of the safety switches is next in line before power is allowed to the starter solenoid).

Coryduhon · Nov 2, 2017

ritcheyvs said:
Well, it sounds like a bad battery cable although that doesn't explain draining the new battery overnight. Battery cables on these things can fail internally (inside the insulation) such that they look fine to the eyeball and even pass voltage if there is no actual load. You might try bypassing the factory battery cable with a big jumper cable: for example connect battery + to the big starter terminal and see if that fixes it.

The reason the starter didn't engage the flywheel is that you only powered the actual motor, not the solenoid (I think). The solenoid serves as a big relay to send currentto the starter motor but it also forces the starter pinion gear to engage the flywheel.

UPDATE***********

After lots of input from you guys I was able to take starter completely off again last night isolating it from the original circuit. I ran a seperate jumper cable to the starter and it worked. I then hooked it up back to the tractor on a separate battery and was able to start the tractor. I then was able to trace the problem back to one being a bad ground on the starter and I think my biggest problem was the original ground. even though I cleaned it up and sanded all the fittings it was still not getting a good enough ground to power my tractor. I used jumper cables as my ground and it worked fine. So I will be replacing the main power and ground cables soon and Hopefully this will solve everything. Its kind of weird how this all went bad after I hit something with my bush hog but at least I got it back started.

Thanks again guys for all the comments. this is a great group.

ritcheyvs · Nov 2, 2017

Thanks for the update. When these cables go bad, often just moving the cable slightly will restore function (temporarily) or break a previously functioning system. Glad you got the cause isolated. And kudos for finding the root cause vs just swapping parts (as so many do).