Export thread

Tractor: YT4000
New Battery: Reads 12.1 VDC

Solenoid/Starter
When turning the key, nothing happens. No clicking of the solenoid even. When checking the power to the solenoid, there is power.

• Start Switch: Testing the start switch shows that turning to the start position properly connects power. (disconnected switch, checked continuity between the S & B pins when switch is turned to start)
• Solenoid: Using a screwdriver across the screwdriver to power the starter directly (I know, bypasses safety switches), still nothing.

Lights
Also - the lights do not turn on either, which I find odd. I tried turning them on with the key on, in start position, still nothing. Most of the electrical drawings show it coming right off the key (inaccurate), but just found one that looks like the power comes through the switch and then alternator - which then makes some sense as to why the lights do not turn on.

I used the following electrical diagram which should be the correct electricals: https://tractorfile.com/wp-content/...o-yt-4500-craftsman-tractor-parts-diagram.jpg

So at this point I would think it is the starter that is the problem.... But I still would expect to hear the solenoid click, which it isn't. So - I am confused.

Might be a bad ground return. Things like loose ground mounting screws or corroded cable end, or bad cable.

As for the lights they don't receive power unless the engine is running according to the wiring schematic posted.

I checked to see if there were a ground problem doing the following:

• Checked across #1 (battery positive) and #2 (battery negative): 11.4VDC
• Checked across #1 (battery positive) and frame: 11.4VDC (if I made sure the connection was good)
• Pulled the solenoid wires off and checked #1 (battery positive) and #3 (black coil wire post): 11.4VDC
• Jumpered #3 (black coil wire) to ground on motor, Jumpered #4 (power to solenoid) to #5 (white coil wire post) - This should have gotten the starter going. Nothing.

To me, that says I should be able to use the screwdriver trick on the solenoid to jumpstart the starter (provided 11.4 VDC is enough to get it going). So - is it the starter? Or do I need to run some other tests?

Here is a procedure which I recommend to find the cause of starting problems. With the results we will be able to tell you how to proceed.

Electrical* problems can be very easy or very difficult, depending on four things.
1. * How well you understand basic electricity.
2. *What tools you have and know how to use.
3. *How well you follow directions.
4. *You don't overlook or assume anything and verify everything.

Remember we cannot see what you are doing. *You are our eyes, ears and fingers in solving this problem. *You must be as accurate as you can when you report back. *The two basic tools we will ask you to use are a test light and a multi-meter. *If you have an assistant when going through these tests it would be very helpful. *These steps work the best when done in order, so please don't jump around. *Now let's solve this problem.

First, check the fuse(s), check battery connections for corrosion (clean if necessary) and *voltage - above 12.5 volts should be good.*

Second, check for power from the battery to one of the large terminals on the solenoid. *One of the wires is connected directly to the battery and has power all the time so one of the large terminals should light a test light or show 12 volts on a meter at all times.*

Third, *check for power at the small terminal of the solenoid while depressing the clutch/brake pedal and holding the key in the start position (you may need an assistant to sit in the seat to override the safety switch). If your solenoid is a four wire solenoid, check both small wire terminals as one is ground and the other is power from the ignition switch. *If your solenoid is a three wire solenoid, make sure the solenoid body is not corroded where it bolts to the chassis of the mower as this is your ground path back to the battery. *If in doubt, remove the solenoid and clean the mounting area down to bare metal. *If there is no power to the small terminal then your problem is most likely a safety switch, ignition switch or in the wiring.*

Fourth, check for power on the other large terminal of the solenoid while holding the key in the start position q(you may need an assistant to sit in the seat to override the safety switch).*

Fifth, check for power at the starter while holding the key in the start position (assistant again).*

Sixth, check your ground circuit back to the battery.

After you have gone through each of the above steps, let us know what happened when you did each step. *At that point we will have great info to tell you how to proceed. *Remember you are our eyes, ears, and fingers, so please be as accurate as possible.

Be as specific as possible with voltage readings as this will help diagnose your problem quicker. *If you do not know how to perform the above checks, just ask and I will try to guide you through it. *Youtube also has some videos and as you know a picture is worth a thousand words.

Rivets said:

First, check the fuse(s), check battery connections for corrosion (clean if necessary) and *voltage - above 12.5 volts should be good.*

Click to expand...

This was trickier than I thought. At first it showed 11.5V. Then 11.7V. What I noticed in subsequent steps was that when I was on the mower, the voltage could change all the way to to 12.7 depending upon where I was standing. Steady-state was 11.7V, though.
**EDIT** No corrosion at all on the battery posts or connections, the only fuse (20 Amp) was intact and tested same with Ohm reading.

Rivets said:

Second, check for power from the battery to one of the large terminals on the solenoid. *One of the wires is connected directly to the battery and has power all the time so one of the large terminals should light a test light or show 12 volts on a meter at all times.*

Click to expand...

11.7 V
Note: When removing the ground wire from the battery post and testing against the positive battery post and netgative post (with negative post cable removed), the voltage jumped up to 12.6V.

Rivets said:

Third, *check for power at the small terminal of the solenoid while depressing the clutch/brake pedal and holding the key in the start position (you may need an assistant to sit in the seat to override the safety switch). If your solenoid is a four wire solenoid, check both small wire terminals as one is ground and the other is power from the ignition switch. *If your solenoid is a three wire solenoid, make sure the solenoid body is not corroded where it bolts to the chassis of the mower as this is your ground path back to the battery. *If in doubt, remove the solenoid and clean the mounting area down to bare metal. *If there is no power to the small terminal then your problem is most likely a safety switch, ignition switch or in the wiring.*

Click to expand...

11.7 V when clutch and start were engaged

Rivets said:

Fourth, check for power on the other large terminal of the solenoid while holding the key in the start position q(you may need an assistant to sit in the seat to override the safety switch).*

Click to expand...

0 V

Rivets said:

Fifth, check for power at the starter while holding the key in the start position (assistant again).*

Click to expand...

0 V

Rivets said:

Sixth, check your ground circuit back to the battery.

Click to expand...

Was not an open loop


I have enough tools and a very nice multimeter, so the job was pretty easy really. Seems like a large voltage drop when the ground cable is connected, which leads me to believe there is a resistance problem (maybe corroded wire or poor connection). Moving around on the mower and seeing voltage changes makes me think it is either a broken wire or a bad wire connection/termination.

Looks to me like you have a bad starter solenoid. I’m assuming you have a three terminal solenoid and if you have power at the small terminal and it is not closing, that indicates that the solenoid is bad. I’m also assuming you removed this solenoid and made sure that the solenoid base and the area on the chassis is clean and bare, as this surface is your ground connection.

Rivets said:

Looks to me like you have a bad starter solenoid. I’m assuming you have a three terminal solenoid and if you have power at the small terminal and it is not closing, that indicates that the solenoid is bad. I’m also assuming you removed this solenoid and made sure that the solenoid base and the area on the chassis is clean and bare, as this surface is your ground connection.

Click to expand...

It is a 4-Terminal solenoid, actually. I ran a couple of tests on it including what you mentioned above. After that I jumpered it according to a youTube video (). I tested power at the starter also, expecting at least the 11.7 V, but nothing there. Since it is a 4 terminal, the ground is on the small coil connection from what I saw in the electricals.

One more test. With a 4 terminal solenoid remove the small wire from the small ground terminal on the solenoid and if possible run a ground wire from this terminal to battery negative terminal. If you can’t do this, run this jumper to a good chassis ground. Now repeat the third and fourth tests I posted. If you still have 0 voltage at the large solenoid terminal going to the starter, bod solenoid. I know I shouldn’t do this, but I’m assuming you have also tested the starter by running a heavy wire jumper from battery + terminal to starter terminal and this will turn the engine over?? Am I right??

Does that solenoid need a good mounting ground to clean metal? If so wire wheel time.

slomo

slomo said:

Does that solenoid need a good mounting ground to clean metal? If so wire wheel time.

slomo

Click to expand...

No it is a 4 post solenoid so should be grounded by one of the posts.

Rivets said:

One more test. With a 4 terminal solenoid remove the small wire from the small ground terminal on the solenoid and if possible run a ground wire from this terminal to battery negative terminal. If you can’t do this, run this jumper to a good chassis ground. Now repeat the third and fourth tests I posted. If you still have 0 voltage at the large solenoid terminal going to the starter, bod solenoid. I know I shouldn’t do this, but I’m assuming you have also tested the starter by running a heavy wire jumper from battery + terminal to starter terminal and this will turn the engine over?? Am I right??

Click to expand...

Sorry for the delay, had my son's baseball to watch last night.

Ran the same test with the solenoid grounded to the negative post of the battery.

First note: Overnight the battery power jumped up such that it was nearly 15VDC (I had the chassis ground pulled from the negative post). I put the chassis ground back on and it went down slowly to about 12.5.

3rd and 4th tests both produced 0V

I also tested with a jumper (not a heavy wire, though):

1. Kept the voltmeter across the battery terminals
2. Pulled the Solenoid wire off which leads to the starter
3. Used jumper (probably 24 AWG) from battery positive post to wire leading to starter - Nothing happened
4. Used jumper from battery positive post to starter post - Nothing happened

Interesting to note that on both tests 3&4 with the starter - the voltmeter would read 0V across the battery terminals as soon as power was put to the starter.

If the voltage across the battery drops to 0V when the key is turned to the start position, then this would indicate a bad cell in the battery. You need to have the battery load tested, a good auto repair shop should be able to do this for you, as I don’t trust the auto parts stores.

ok. Since this is a brand new battery - maybe I take it back. Still I wonder about a couple of things:

1. When I move around on the mower (just shift my weight side to side) - I can easily change the voltage almost 2V
2. When the battery has both posts connected (after having the negative-to-chassis pulled) - the voltage drops slowly from 14-15V to 11.x. This suggests some sort of low-level short, right?

Remember we not standing there to see the problem. Personally I think you are over thinking the problem, which is getting in the way of posting a good picture for us to look at. Every time you post a testing result, but doing something a little different when preforming the test, gets very confusing for us. Electrical troubleshooting is difficult enough when we are physically doing the tests, it gets even tougher when we must rely on someone else’s eyes, ears and ability to get to the bottom of the problem. When you keep adding a different result to a test, we must reread the entire thread and then try to see if there is now a different cause than the direction we were going. This almost always results in a misdiagnosis. Each step in the procedure I posted tells us where the possible cause might be. From what you originally posted, my opinion lad me to believe you have a solenoid problem, but now because you back tracked and tested somethings differently, I would look at a battery problem. This now has me very confused, because I don’t know which set of results is the most accurate. I know other techs, with background in electrical troubleshooting, have been watching this post, but don’t want to jump in and make things more confusing, but I’m now asking them to reread this thread and tell me if I am missing something.

Sorry about that. I do have an electrical background - so I'm not trying to do things willy-nilly. Admittedly I should have done a better job at testing, my apologies.

Regardless, I performed 3 more tests (don't worry, these will be more insightful):

1. I pushed the mower out, pulled up the Explorer, and used Jumper Cables. I attached the negative to the chassis (and to the Explorer negative post) and the positive I then put on the starter post. The starter works.

2. After this, I reattached all cables and put the jumper cables in typical fashion (negative-negative, positive-positive). No start.

3. Final test, I removed the white wire on the solenoid coil (this is the wire that would go through the clutch and start switch to provide power). Then I ran a jumper from the positive post of the mower battery to the solenoid coil in that position to mimic having the clutch pushed and key turned to start. Starter started. (Tested with and without jumper cables - starter works both ways)


So - since I had previously tested the starter switch (key) and the S&B terminals definitely have continuity when the key is turned, I took a guess that it was the clutch cable in some capacity that was the problem. What I found was that the clutch ground was not secured very tightly, so I took it off, cleaned it up (along with the chassis), and put it back on. **EDIT** That may be the ground to the solenoid coming back to the chasis, difficult to tell unless I take the cables out of the conduit

The mower wouldn't start, but turned over. I used my Explorer to jumpstart and now I will let the alternator charge the battery back up while the motor is running. Hopefully there isn't an electrical short in there of some sort which is draining the battery, but should know soon enough!

You did it again, repeated the same test, but in a different way WITH different results. In your last post, final test, you say you put a jumper between battery + and small terminal on the solenoid. This is the same test you did in step 3 only a different way. Both times you got the same results, battery voltage at the same terminal. Only difference is that now the starter turns over. This is a prime example of why it keeps getting more confusing. At this point I really can’t say what is wrong or whether you may have a bad component. Personally I would say you are back at square one, could be a bad connection, bad component, incorrect testing procedure or a combination of each. I wouldn’t replace any parts until you can verify 100% the cause of the problem.

Been sitting on the edge of this for the exact reason Rivets just mentioned.
And of course I do things a little different which just gets more confusing.
Get some thing with a load like a stop / tail globe .
Hook one side to the white wire to the solenoid the other to a good ground.
Do 100 , not 50 not 99 but 100 start switches and hold the key in start for a minute or so
While you are doing this bounce around in the seat .
If the globe does not light up 100 times or flashes when you are bouncing around then you have a problem in the cranking circuit.
Usually this will be wear in the switches, or the mountings, particularly if they are just a barb pushed though a hole .
If the circuit passed the globe switch, repeat with the globe hooked up between the two trigger wires from the solenoid.
If it fails the test this time your solenoid ground wire is suspect .
If the solenoid ground wire is suspect replace it then try the jump from the battery + cable to the white trigger wire terminal on the solenoid.
If it works then the ground wire was the problem but again you need to do 50 or so cranks to rule out burned contacts on the solenoid