I started my KX161-3 today and it started great as usual. I shut it down and when I went to start it again, I heard an electrical crackling sound in the vicinity of the ignition switch. Now absolutely everything is dead. Nothing happens when you turn the ignition on. I checked every fuse, including the two main 50 and 60 amp slow blow fuses. All look OK. Does anyone have any ideas as to what the problem might be? Thanks.
I would bypass the switch and see if it will run. Could be the switch is what you heard "crackling"
Sorry, I forgot to mention that I tried that. There are 3 wires into the switch. One has constant power. I removed the switch and tried jumping from the one with power to the other two. Nothing happened.
Look near the batteries for a big relay, if it has one connected to one of the battery main cables the ignition switch has to send power to it to pull it in, sending power to the starter and all other systems. You may have a blown fuse, broken wire, bad connection, etc. Also check the main battery cable and any other wires connected to the large terminal on the starter, look for looseness and arcing evidence.
Thank you! With the ignition on, I started checking all of the connections off the battery. There is a blade terminal on the lug that connects to the positive battery terminal. As soon as I touched it, I heard a click. I pulled it off and it was quite dirty and a bit corroded. I cleaned it up and now everything works. What threw me off was the fact that there was power to the switch. Because of that, I assumed everything was good from the battery. Once again, a big thank you! Your suggestion saved me a lot of grief trying to chase down what turned out to be a minor problem.
No worries, glad you got it going!