Cleared out my parking area and 100 feet of driveway out to the road .. that took me about one hour .. after I parked it, a guy who was plowing a driveway at the house next door walked down my driveway and said he was stuck .. I started up my hoe, went over and spent only about 15 minutes getting him out .. only reason it took that long is that sometimes I have a problem getting the differential to lock .. anyway I drove back home & parked it .. this morning, it wouldn't start .. just clicking from the solenoid .. I checked the battery and actually tried starting with the battery analyzer hooked up .. it showed the voltage at 13.3 initially, and dropping off down to 11 & below if I hold the start button in .. I also tried jumping right across the solenoid with screwdriver .. same results .. any ideas? Tom
Take the starter off of it, set it on the ground, hook some jumper cables to it, and see if it will operate.
try popping starter with a dead blow while someone tries to start the machine. Check starter solenoid connections
ok, I was first gonna give it the barklee dead blow test, and upon pushing the start button a little while ago she kicked right over .. no problem though, I go around scratchin my head most all the time anyway :beatsme
Sounds like a problem with the starter motor itself - if the battery voltage drops when the solenoid clicks, it likely means that the solenoid has made a good connection between the battery and the motor. Shorting across the solenoid (with no results) confirms this. If the motor is connected to the battery and is drawing current but not spinning, it's either got a short or it's being held from moving. If the engine is free (which yours obviously is), then it's more likely that the motor has a shorted winding. If that's the problem, then it'll happen again - the next time it happens to stop on the shorted winding. Otherwise, the motor will appear to be operating normally - if it's just one winding that's shorted, the motor can spin past the bad one without losing much power, but if it happens to stop on the bad winding, it can't get started moving. This is just a guess - let us know if it happens again. PG
Thanks for that input PG, my old bolens 1050 had that exact problem, only it was easy to spin the starter by hand past the bad spot .. as you know we had some deep snow here in eastern PA the past couple weeks or I would never even have had the hoe running for another month or two .. I have started it several times now without incident since the original problem .. I do have a good buddy who has a motor winding shop who took care of the starter/generator on the bolens last year, so after all threat of snow is gone I will get the starter over to him.
Similar 580B problems I had a similar problem with my 580B (owned 18 yrs.). As soon as the weather got cold this winter everytime I went to crank, all I got was clicking and the battery voltage drop like you had reported. Sometimes it would click 10 -20 times then crank or I would have to jump it with another battery. After cleaning all contacts and grounds along with dis-assembly and cleaning of starter case the clicking problem was still there when cold. Then just a few weeks ago I installed a new starter solenoid ($20), no more clicking when cranking. Problem #2 Differential lock intermittent. I had same problem years ago. Take apart the right cover on the rear differential and check for corrosion on shaft/bushing. Clean these areas up with wire brush & 400/600 wet/dry paper and lightly grease and reassemble. When you press on the pedal you're acting on a torsion spring. The corrosion prevents the fork/locking sleeve to move the way it should. Note: This is a small cover and it has some hex head bolts and at least one recessed socket head bolt, it can sometimes be hard to see.
Yes, the clicking is the sound of the solenoid contacts snapping together, which you normally don't hear, not because they don't make noise, but because the sound of the motor cranking the engine is louder. If you hear the click, then either the motor isn't getting power or it has a bad winding. The drop in battery voltage would seem to indicate a short, but if jd1234 saw the same voltage drop and yet the problem was the solenoid, then I'm a little confused - what was causing the battery voltage to drop? Unless the battery was also weak and the power draw of the solenoid itself was enough to drop the voltage? Maybe the problem is being made worse by the battery being cold? Not sure. The other clue is that when tloft shorted the solenoid contacts there was no response - if the problem is in the solenoid, shorting it would make the starter motor run. Since it didn't, then I still think the problem is in the motor. I'll be interested to hear how this one turns out. PG
JD, thanks for the differential lock tip, that's some good information there. PG, I will let you know if it happens again .. so far, no problem with a dozen or more starts .. however, I did take apart & clean up the solenoid connections, and plan to have it checked out at my friends motor shop in March.