I was following the direction of #40fan who was kind enough to help me. I stopped on Weds. and got back to it last night and this morning. In his absence I have checked to confirm power goes to the 2 safety switches (behind the wheels which are off - tractor is on blocks) and that a different safety or key switch does not result in start up. So now I believe I just need to find out how to wire the relay as I feel that this is the issue. The starter and solenoid work by effective hot wiring. So I just need to find out which wire should go to 85, 86, 87 and 30 on the relay and I suspect if will start with the old key switch. Thanks and no you are not dense. I am an amateur and not very good at this.
All here are trying to help. Me too. My problem is that I have too much experience with electrical systems in an industrial environment, and do not always recognize others will less experience might not see things easily.
There is no doubt in my mind that all you need to do is hook up the relay like it was when you disconnected it. It is very unlikely that the issue exists elsewhere, since it worked fine before you disconnected the wires.
With four wires there are something like 16 to 20 possible combinations of how they can be hooked up. Less when you divide the two functions, relay coil and contacts, which each get a pair of wires. But still enough combinations to be confusing.
If you know what connecting points on the relay/socket connect to the operating coil, then you can identify the wire that goes to the engine frame. You can do this by measuring resistance to the frame/engine block with you ohmmeter. That wire will be one side of the coil. The other side of the coil will be the wire that comes from the safety circuit.
Worry about that one later.
Now you should also be able to identify the wire that goes to one of the relay contacts, that comes from the 12 volt battery, likely tied to the starter heavy wire that comes to it from the battery. This wire goes to one of the relay contacts. So you now have two wires connected to the relay properly.
Note: In the case of the coil and the relay contacts, it does not matter which wires of each pair goes to which terminal.
When you get that far, you can connect the other relay contact side, to the starter solenoid terminal. The reason you can do this is you know that the 12 volts that comes from the battery MUST go to the starter solenoid terminal, and NOT to the tractor frame.
This leaves one wire left, which must come from the safety circuit. Hook that one up to the other side of the relay coil.
You should now be good to go.
But remember, unless you identify the connecting points on the relay/socket, and know what two are for the operating coil, and what two are for a relay contact, you are pretty much shooting in the dark.
Hope this helps. This is what I tried to say in previous posts...
