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Hi All,

I've spent countless hours researching and troubleshooting this; I hope there is a simple answer here.

I have a Craftsman Model 917271011 with a CV15S engine; I'm troubleshooting a charging issue. My stator has 2 wires (green and black). The service manual for the CV15 shows one with a yellow and black wire... not sure if there is a service manual for the CV15s the is different. I've pulled back the heat shrink and found that the diode is destroyed. It appears the the black wire splits off one wire goes to the lights and the other has a diode, and after the diode connects to the battery for charging; I assume the green wire is the stator brake.

Now, the green wire is reading 12v AC at idle and the black one is at about 36v AC at idle; this leads me to believe that the green wire may be for the unregulated lights. Ive put a 6a 50v rectifying diode (many have recommended this) in-line, but I'm getting 18v DC which is way too much for the battery and the diode gets very very hot.

The replacement stator for this model has a yellow and black wire, and I'm assuming it has the diode built into the black side. So yellow for the lights and black for the charging system.

Can anyone point me in the right direction here? I dont think the stator is bad as I'm getting the correct AC voltage. Not sure if I have the wire run to the correct location or If the diode is just wrong.

Any guidance with this would be appreciated, thanks in advance,

Eric

Eric,

Yes it looks like you have a stator brake system, a piece of complicates circuitry to keep the pencil dicks trying to prove Darwin was wrong happy.
The green wire is the braking system, It goes to ground which puts a massive load on the stator and stops the engine about 3 revolutions faster than it would have without it.

A simple diode system produces pulses of DC from 0 V through to a peak ( 18V in your case ) then dropping back down to 0 V followed by an equal amount of time while the diode is converting the - side of the wave to heat then back to 0 V again.
What is critical is the Volts at the battery so take your reading there.
These crude, rude & unsofisticated systems use the battery to regulate the system voltage.
If you read better than 15V at the battery then you can start to worry.
In some systems the lights must be on to soak up the excess current and in particular the - side of the cycle as the lights are just a resistance and does not care it they get AC , DC or even BC .
These are the ones where the lights come on whenever the engine is running.

As for you manual, it has been available free of charge as a digital download for eons.
GO to there web page, plug in your engine numbers and it will bring up your owners, service and parts manuals.
If it asks you to log in, click on the "guest" option.

If that does not work you can get it from this site http://www.mymowerparts.com/about_us.php.
Click on the "free manuals" link in the red navigation bar then navigate through to the Kohler section.

The 917 of your serial number indicates Roper as the manufacturer of your machine and Roper were made by AYP a company that Husqvarna took over so you might find a service manual by trolling through Husqvarna archives.

Wow, thanks for the info; lots of good stuff there.

So I connected the green wire from the stator to the single connector which is yellow on the other side.

Coming out of the black wire, to ground, I have 10VAC and 5VDC after the diode. When I connect that to the black wire on the 4 pin plug, I don't get any change in voltage at the battery, obviously. i have switched the wires, and like I stated, I'm getting about 20VDC and the diode gets super hot. I added the photos below, perhaps I'm connecting it back wrong. 10VAC is way less that it is suppose to be, I think I read that 26VAC is the minimum, that would give me roughly 14VDC after teh diode, but what would power the lights on the stator side of the diode?

Also, I included a diagram of how the wires were connected before I started trying to troubleshoot it. Notice the diode branched off of the black wire; not sure is the previous owner did that to it or if that is factory.

Eric