PHPaul
Well-known member
Equipment
B2650, Pronovost snow blower, Landpride rotary mower, Howard tiller, box blade
I built this Franken-tractor from a John Deere 455 running gear with a Shibaura diesel replacing the blown up Yanmar. It has a slow leak in one tire so I decided to fire it up and pull it out of the barn and up to the shop to blow that tire up. I've had it on a battery tender and expect it would do it's usual thing: bitch, moan and complain but eventually start.
Wrong, buffalo breath. Fine, been wanting to check out that Horror Fright jump pack I bought anyway. Hooked it up and...ruh...ruh...click-click-click-damnit! Double checked the jump pack and connections and that's not the problem. Well, I've never had that starter apart and I got nothing better to do.
Disassembled, cleaned out some rusty dust, polished up the commutator, buffed off the business end of the brushes, oiled the bushings and reassembled. Incorrectly. Several times. After exhausting all the possible incorrect combinations I finally figured it out (the bendix linkage was kicking my butt...) and put it back on the tractor. Aaaaaaaaaaaaannnnd....Nada. If I jumped the terminals on the solenoid it'd spin the engine over...slowly. And the solenoid was getting real hot. I'd noticed it seemed a little lazy on the bench.
Indulged in some more colorful language, took it back off, disassembled it yet again and stood around meditating and scratching my bald spot. That's a non-trivial endeavor and somewhat time consuming. The only thing that occurred to me was that I might have gotten the battery and starter connections on the solenoid back-asswards, tho I can't see why that would make a difference.
Wrong again, buffalo breath! Swapped 'em and bench tested it and that bendix SNAPPED in and out with authority. Put it back on the tractor and hit the key and ruh-ruh-VROOOM!
Huh. Always has been a beeyotch to start, might've been wrong all along.
