Hi, my trusty Honda 3813 lawn tractor has developed a weird starting problem.
On a fully charged battery, it will spin and start fine on first go from cold. But ...
1. Switch it off after a minute or two and try to restart and it turns very slowly and wont start.
2. Removing the spark plugs makes negligible difference to the spin speed off the starter
3. When keeping the starter turning slowly, after a minute or two smoke starts issuing form the solenoid to starter cable and both solenoid terminals get very hot.
4. Solenoid does it's clunk engagement noise fine
4. After the above the battery still reads 12.9V across its terminals ... and <> same reading across solenoid terminals
5. If I put the battery onto a 4amp charge for a coule of hours and refit, it will again spin the starter and start the machine.
6. Its deffo NOT the battery by the way
Any ideas before I go to the major hassle of removing the engine, to remove the starter to check it out ?
Its sunday, it's 3:15pm in Scotland, I'm back at work first thing tommoroww morning and the grass is growing so fast you can see it moving skywards :crybaby:
On a fully charged battery, it will spin and start fine on first go from cold. But ...
1. Switch it off after a minute or two and try to restart and it turns very slowly and wont start.
2. Removing the spark plugs makes negligible difference to the spin speed off the starter
3. When keeping the starter turning slowly, after a minute or two smoke starts issuing form the solenoid to starter cable and both solenoid terminals get very hot.
4. Solenoid does it's clunk engagement noise fine
4. After the above the battery still reads 12.9V across its terminals ... and <> same reading across solenoid terminals
5. If I put the battery onto a 4amp charge for a coule of hours and refit, it will again spin the starter and start the machine.
6. Its deffo NOT the battery by the way
Any ideas before I go to the major hassle of removing the engine, to remove the starter to check it out ?
Its sunday, it's 3:15pm in Scotland, I'm back at work first thing tommoroww morning and the grass is growing so fast you can see it moving skywards :crybaby: