Hustler Sport - Kawasaki Engine- electrical issues

[Shifty2002]

Original problem - key switch did not engage starter. Recently replaced my starter solenoid, wasn't the problem, eliminated down to starter relay under control panel. Mow starts fine now.

Went out to mow and when I brought the arms in to drive the engine died. Ended up linking the two arm kill wires together and the seat safety switch to eliminate Kill Relay issues. Now mower starts, no more arm or seat kill. When I go to turn the PTO on, mower dies. Blades can be turned by hand. PTO starts to engage before motor dies.

Found a 6 pin connector coming out of the motor with red (hard connector to motor), green and black (push connectors), all located in a row of top pins on connector housing. Red wire has a jumper that comes out of the top pin connection and makes a single pin below. Notice the jumper pin has corroded free from connector housing and on tractor side the corresponding blue (maybe purple blue?) wire was also out of the connector. turned these into male/female connector, reinstalled

Mower still dies when I try and turn on the PTO

 

[StarTech]

Sounds like a dead cylinder problem.

 

[Shifty2002]

Sounds like a dead cylinder problem.

Motor starts fine, runs fine, sounds like it did two weeks ago - strong, great throttle response. I can obviously pull spark plug wires, one at a time and see if anything changes but don't see how a dead cylinder would create all these kill switch issues. Care to elaborate on your dead cylinder theory?

 

[StarTech]

Not related the lap bars/seat switches issue. V-twins can run normal on one cylinder. You can even drive most mowers with hydrostatic transaxles around without without killing the engine or notice a problem. Its when the deck load is applied with the engine becomes overload. and dies. There is nothing in the PTO that kill the engine via a safety switch besides you already bypassed the seat switch.