I recently bought this mower with 55 hours on it. Started fine and mower engaged fine until i serviced it yesterday. Changed the oil and greased it. Mower spindles looked like it had been a long time since greased if ever so i put about 15 pumps in them. [Maybe too much?] Anyway, it started up fine, i let it warm up good. I went to engage the mower and it killed the motor. After that it would not crank. I eliminated possible seat and clutch switch problem,it's not there. Ignition switch is powering through. Fuse is good and gets power. The starter solenoid is not getting power to energize it. I did get it running by hot wiring the solenoid. When i rev it up and engage the mower the blades start to turn but it kills the motor. Any ideas to a newbe. Thanks.
#2
tom3
I wonder if those spindle bearings are double sealed, grease impacted the seals into the actual bearing? Can you turn the blades by hand (motor off, PTO off?
Not cranking is an electrical problem.
Did you turn the PTO switch off after it stalled out the first time ? we have all done, some more times than others ?
Next take off the deck belt and then engage the PTO.
If the engine dies then again you have an electrical problem , if not it is mechanical in the deck .
I turned the outside blade by hand but i will check the other blades. It's not the PTO switch. It does kick in and out. I did try engaging it several times on and off to try to get the blades spinning and every time i engage it, it wants to kill the motor. I will remove the mower belt tomorrow and see if it stays running. [ I think it will because when i engage the mower it really pulls the motor down.] I wonder if i put too much grease in the spindles that would make too much drag to get the blades spinning . I still will have the electrical issue, wonder if it could be somewhere in the mower clutch system.
I have had that problem caused by the lose of one cylinder. Many people cannot tell if an engine is running on one or two cylinders. If it is only running on one cylinder, it will not have enough power to properly engage the clutch.
Well that was good advice. I took the mower belt off the clutch pulley, started it again by hot wire. When i pull the knob to engage the clutch it dies. When i just turn the key to on and push and pull the clutch, i can see the clutch working. So, it is electrical, have to see what i can find. I did clean a lot of debris from that area when i serviced it, apparently i screwed something up.
Went out to look it over again. All wiring looks good, to the mower clutch also. I took several wire connections apart to check for corrosion, all seemed good. Put everything back together, still will not start unless i hot wire it. I pushed it back to it's spot in the garage. Tried it one more time and it started on it's own, mower kicks in and runs fine. Engaged the mower several times and it worked great. Shut it off and now won't start on it's own again. Gotta be something in that clutch circuit i'm thinking. I think i may go see if i can find some electrical contact cleaner to clean all the connections. Any suggestions are appreciated.
#8
PTmowerMech
Did you check your ground connections? Sounds a little like short somewhere. Does fine one time, then won't do it the next.
Safety switching, IIRC, either work or they don't. Unless there's a short in it.
Because I get these sorts of things all the time I made a set of bypass patch wires.
Short ones to make the switch connections and longer ones to span the space between switchs.
Start by pulling the plugs on each switch, one at a time and use the patch wires to make the switch's normal connections
Before you start, pull the key switch plug & jump the B & S + the M & G wires .
Thus when you find the problem the engine will crank but not start
Because mowers vibrate a lot it is quite common to find a wire that is broken just where it is crimped so you get a works / won't work situation just like you have, but a worn out switch will appear the same.
I did do that with the seat, reverse mow, and clutch switch's. The problem is not there but i'll try your suggestion. Can you explain more on the B&S+ M&G wires. Had a bad day with pain from a surgery gone bad so i could not look into it anymore today. Hope maybe to tomorrow. Thanks.
On he back of the key switch you should see tiny letters put there so us techs can wire them up properly.
Battery
Start
Magneto
Ground.
There are others but not important right now.
When trying to find a no crank problem it is handy to have the cranking circuit energized so you dont need to grow a 3rd hand to keep turning the key to the Start position.
There should also be a switch on the parking brake.
To crank the PTO , Brake & Neutral switches all need to be closed . Not all have the neutral switch .
The seat switch is not in the cranking circuit
When running
PTO & Seat switch will kill the engine if you get off with the blades running
Seat & brake swith will kill the engine if you get off with the engine running & brake off
The reverse switch will either kill the engine or turn off an electric PTO if you reverse with the blades on
bertsmobile1 You sir are a scholar. I followed your directions on bypassing the ignition switch and other switch's. Started wiggling wires at connections and taking them apart to clean them with electrical contact cleaner [unhooked the battery to do the spray cleaner on connections] When i got to the relay under the dash and started to pull it apart, it started cranking. The terminals on that relay were pretty dirty. Pretty sure it's fixed. Thanks for your help and all the others with good advice on here.
Glad to hear it .
Now you see why most techs hate electrical work as it can take days of testing & checking .
FWIW I charge out 3 hours for a full service and 4 hours just to repair wiring .
Before I found this site & all the wonderful helpful people on here I started using that method.
Really good for no crank as the starter itsel will tell you when you have found the problem and on some mowers you need to hang from the roof to get probes in.
