Repairs Toro TimeMaster - blade disengaging

[Tags]

Greetings,
As I don't have a repair manual for my Toro TimeMaster, I am hoping that someone can point me in the right direction.

My mower is ~12 months old, and recently, the blades started to randomly disengage. The motor does NOT stall. But for no reason (that I can determine), even though the clutch is fully engaged, the blades spin down and stop. The motor is still running... but the blades are not. If I release the clutch, and pull it back, the blades start back up. Sometimes. Sometimes the blades will start on the first re-engage. Other times, it takes two or three clutch engages until they 'catch'. They I'm good for another 5 - 20 minutes. Very unusual behavior.

Thanks in advance for any guidance anyone can provide. Toro Customer Support was really quite awful - I thought an Internet forum may be better...

 

[bertsmobile1]

Sounds like a safey switch problem so the easiest way to test is to bypass everything and power it direct from the battery with some custom jumper leads.
make sure you put a fuse in them. You can acually use the fuse as a switch for a short time just to test .
If it works fine then your battery and the clutch are OK and you have a problem in the wiring.
There should be a wiring diagram in the back of the owners manual.
If it still drops out then the battery/charging system require looking at.
Most clutches will drop out at anything under 10V.

Do not decide to mow with the system bypassed as it is very dangerious

 

[Tags]

Hello bertsmobile1 - thank you for the quick reply. I will take a closer look at the mower, but I wasn't aware it had a battery or a bypass switch at all. One of the TimeMaster models does have an electric start option (with a battery), but mine is the lower-end pull-start model. Everything I can see strikes me as very mechanical in nature, but it's entirely possible there may be more going on under the plastic covers...

Sounds like a safey switch problem so the easiest way to test is to bypass everything and power it direct from the battery with some custom jumper leads.
make sure you put a fuse in them. You can acually use the fuse as a switch for a short time just to test .
If it works fine then your battery and the clutch are OK and you have a problem in the wiring.
There should be a wiring diagram in the back of the owners manual.
If it still drops out then the battery/charging system require looking at.
Most clutches will drop out at anything under 10V.

Do not decide to mow with the system bypassed as it is very dangerious

 

[Rivets]

You are still in the warranty period, so take it back to the dealer. There are no safety switches, I suspect that you have an idler pulley that is going bad. Don't fool with it and void your warranty.

 

[bigjohns97]

I had the same problem is this was the solution, it happened right around 12 months of service.