Slow Crank hard start, CC 147

[West Valley G]

Electricity is what I meant yes, still very rusty with electricity of all sorts, motors I’m pretty good at diagnosing and fixing but these wiring issues are the bane of my existence.

Personally if electric is the tough spot for you I would spend some time
learning how it works before I tried to build a harness or just replace it
altogether. If you end up replacing it at least you would have an
understanding of what it does. Just my opinion. Individual results may
vary.

Ken

[Cubcadetpatrick]

Originally Posted by West Valley G

Sounds like after the battery is clean its time to start looking at individual
wires. Not really to difficult and a great way to learn.
I would get the wiring diagram right next to you and your volt meter.
Set it to ohms/continuity. From diagram simply identify both ends of
a single wire. EXAMPLE. Trace the PTO wire or even ground wire
from battery to frame. Key switch to starter. Pick a real easy one and
it will make sense pretty quickly. A wire without a switch in it for ease.
Just a wild guess that if there is masking tape on your wiring you have
wiring problems elsewhere.
Take your time and explore, it will be a great beginning to your tractor
education. Good luck, check in with your findings.

Ken

I assume to do this I need to keep the battery plugged in? Sorry if it’s a dumb question but I honestly don’t understand electricity at all.

[West Valley G]

Can't ask dumb questions if you are trying to learn it.
If you have a Digital Volt Meter it should have a Continuity tester on it.
All that is doing is making sure that you have a good wire with no
breaks in it. And very little resistance, called ohms. Put probe on on end of
wire and one on the other end. The meter is the power source. No battery
needed for this test. In fact you want to make sure you have not juice running
through it when you test continuity. It will probably ruin the meter, be safe
and unhook the battery for this test only. Try on a random piece of wire
laying around the garage, no need for the tractor just to learn the meter.
With this test and a wiring diagram you can learn a lot about the electric and
start getting a little better knowledge on what you are going to want to
know if you are going to work on these COOL machines. Good luck.

Ken

[Brianator]

No you do not need the battery hooked up to test the continuity of wires, only for power in your case. If you set the meter to ohms and touch the probes together you should see it go to "infinity", a little research will go a long way with this! Some multimeters have an audible "beep/squeal" (small sound wave symbol) for it which I personally love because sometimes I find it impossible to try and see the meter and work both probes.

Like others have said, make sure all your power and ground connections are clean and tight! If you would like to learn how to diagnose the issue first before just jumping in to resolve it then read on!

Just because a battery is new(ish) doesn't mean it's good, if it's been left low on charge for any real amount of time it will lose capacity, batteries can also be defective from the get go. Best to unhook/remove it and trickle charge it at 2 or 4 amps until full then read the voltage which should be hovering at 12.6-12.7 volt range, while cranking the engine over you can expect it to drop down into the 10 volt range but it should jump back up into the 12s or high 11s after if only cranked for a few seconds. When the battery has a full charge take note of the voltage then let it sit for a few hours and check again, it should have held it's voltage or only dropped by a point or 2. Alot of auto parts stores will load test your battery for you for free but it's best to take in a fully charged battery to expedite the process.

Once you have the fully charged battery in and hooked back up try to follow the voltage along it's path by anchoring ground to a good clean ground (the battery) and touch positive at different points along the path of power, you may just find you reach a spot where the voltage is considerably lower than battery voltage which would indicate there's a bad connection or component there! Your key switch as does the voltage regulator has a constant supply of battery voltage going to it even when the key is OFF. I'm not sure what post on the key switch (maybe someone else does) but there should be a B or + beside the post, your voltage regulator battery terminal should be stamped with BATT or B.If it was equally lower than battery voltage everywhere then that would indicate a dirty main ground to the battery so clean the battery to chassis ground, test and connect there if required.

If that doesn't turn up anything you can set your meter back to ohms, connect ground to your battery, test continuity at your clean chassis ground to see what you're looking for then start looking for other grounds to test and see if you find one with considerably higher resistance as that would indicate a dirty ground connection.

Other than that all you can do is clean every single connection on the tractor you can find (with the battery unhooked) but I would really recommend to start with the battery and make sure it's not the culprit! It would be a good idea to clean all the connections regardless so you know they're good and become more familiar with your tractor! I personal wipe a very thin film of dielectric grease on every connection I work on to prevent future corrosion, it's cheap, easy and good insurance!

I hope this helps some it took me forever to write! Lol.

[Cubcadetpatrick]

Wow thanks for all of this!
I have a cheap harbor freight multimeter that I tried but it seemed to have died on me. I’ll go pick up a better one tonight. Just to give myself some surety I tested the SG using a method I found on this forum and it seems to be okay. It said that possibly because of the outcome my voltage regulator could be bad. Any certain wires to test to confirm this? I’ve cleaned the battery ground, SG chassis ground as well as the positive battery connection. I’ll go ahead and finish cleaning everything else up and test as many wires as I can in the meanwhile.

[Brianator]

The voltage regulator shouldn't have any bearing on cranking amps but a bad connection at the starter solenoid could (just remembered). Do yourself a favor and get a multimeter with audible, not only will it help with the learning curve but it's really useful!

Found this wiring diagram for you, if you can't see it well I'm sure there's another 'round here! Lol.

*Edit* It's downloadable but a little fuzzy, still readable though.

[Cubcadetpatrick]

Alright so I’ve tested all the wires, all had a reading under 1 ohm so I believe those are all good. I’m taking my battery in to get tested today after work as that seems to be the last thing to try. I didn’t think that would be the issue as like I said it’s a pretty new battery and those things aren’t cheap. Thanks for all the help y’all. I’ll report back if the battery doesn’t end up fixing it.

[Ambush]

I actually had my main ground wire rotted off, inside the frame, at the front lug. It would turn over very slowly because of a 14 gauge ground wire from engine to frame. (149)

[West Valley G]

Originally Posted by Cubcadetpatrick

Alright so I’ve tested all the wires, all had a reading under 1 ohm so I believe those are all good. I’m taking my battery in to get tested today after work as that seems to be the last thing to try. I didn’t think that would be the issue as like I said it’s a pretty new battery and those things aren’t cheap. Thanks for all the help y’all. I’ll report back if the battery doesn’t end up fixing it.

Nicely Done. Keep after it . We all learn on these projects every day.
Sounds like you are getting it figured out.

Ken

[Cubcadetpatrick]

Thanks all for the help. Ended up getting battery tested, they said it was good. After it had charged all night on the trickle charger, I slapped her into the tractor and the starter seems to be turning back at a normal speed. Now I’ve just gotta figure out why in the heck it’s being a pain in the neck to start. I was hoping the slow crank was the issue but it seems not to be. At least this is back in my realm! Once again thanks for the help everybody.