Helping try to diagnose a TB30R with Briggs and Stratton engine. The engine would not start immediately, but if the key was engaged for a while, it would start. We did some testing and thought the starter might be bad, so we replaced it. To change the starter, you basically need to strip off the plastic housing, fuel tank, seat, in essence strip it down. When we put it back together, we ended up with a 2 wire connector with no mate. One is a red wire that goes down under the frame and then I can't follow it without tearing things down further. The other is a green ground wire. The position of the connector is on the left side of the mower, in the area of the battery and starter. The wire leads are only 8 or 12 inches long. At first, I thought maybe it was just a connector for some type of auxiliary option that we don't have. But, after we put everything back together, the mower will not start. It clicks, but that is all. The solenoid seems to test ok on the bench, but something is not quite right. Does anyone have a repair manual, or own one of these and can tell me if there is somewhere that connector should mate up? Very frustrating. I don't want to rewire it and bypass the safety features. Any advice is appreciated.
Put 12 volts on the solenoid and see if it engages, Just clicking like you say sounds like a bad battery connection
You can Jump across the larger terminals on the solenoid - if the starter reacts to that you know the starter is good but solenoid is not. Lots of the machine have extra wiring connections that are not used. You can usually tell if it's been in service by looking at the terminal connecter if it's shiny it was hooked up to some other mating connector - if dirty - probably was extra wire
tested the ignition switch. The pin outs match the diagrams, but one of the pairs seems a little weak, I had to work to get continuity. We will clean those connections and try again.
