Grinding sound, does it sound like the battery is drained at all?
john deere 318 help, i think the Onan is done for good?
New to this forum, and i must say it looks fantastic! lots of helpful people, and lots of great tractor stuff. I bought my "new" 318 in the fall. My first real garden tractor. I searched for quite some time for a machine that could bag vast amounts of leafs, and clear alot of sloped, fairly steep, slippery driveway, and decided on this 318. came with power blower/catcher for leaves and the auger snowblower. It did a great job with the leaves. I was so excited to plow the driveway on this first winter storm in chicago. Well, i tried plowing without the chains, (1st mistake) and the driveway was too slippery, so i went to go get the chains and while doing that, the engine started sounding different, almost like it was on choke. Well, the engine then quit, and now won't start. The starter seems to want to crank it over, but can't so i get a grinding noise. I fear the worst, a siezed engine. There was oil in it, my only concern is that it was parked on a hill for a while, could the oil have drained back leaving no lubrication? is there an oil pump on these Onan engines? I am fairly mechanical, but haven't dealt with tractors too much. Usually if instructed well i can find the problem. my question now is, where do i start? What can i look for to figure out if this engine is done? I'm assuming that since it started ok that it is nothing electrical, and the snow thrower wasn't on and it was in neutral so i don't think its anything related to those two issues. I'm just praying someone with a good knowledge of these machines has seen this before. I don't really want to have to start the post of "so what's the best repower engine" :banghead3 although i'm pretty sure that that is coming.
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Hmmm.....wrong starter perhaps or someone rebuilt a starter with a shorter shaft? What model starter is it?
Ok fuel system is pretty easy, you have the two pickup lines in the tank, they go to the fuel switch on the left pedestal, that line goes to the fuel pump. The other line you can see goes to the carb. The line you cannot see is is the vacuum line on the backside of the fuel pump and goes to the crankcase, this is where the pulse is gotten to pump fuel. So if there is a hole in that line you won't get any fuel. I highly recommend that you replace any original fuel and vacuum lines first. Start with the pickup lines in the tank and work your way forward!
Ok, i've got the starter working good enough for now. Might need some fine tuning later. But i want to get this thing running. So again, it seems to be the fuel not getting through. I'm going to start replacing lines. However, is there any other things i should be looking for. That solution just seems to simple for me. Is there a filter on the lines in the fuel tank i should be looking at? Can the fuel pump go bad? Is there anything that can go wrong in the crankcase that i should look for? Also, is there a way to test the main tank, reserve tank, no fuel switch? It's definantly not creating a vacuum because we tried to get it started by pouring a little fuel in the carb, and it wants to start, but its just running out of fuel.
There is only a screen on the end of each pickup line (one for main and one for reserve) in the tank. The fuel pump can go bad but so can the line to the rear where it gets the pulse from the crankcase. To bypass your fuel system you need to run a fuel line from the carb to a container of gas and hold it above the carb. If it runs then you know the lines or fuel pump are bad.
So hopefully when someone types in "won't start" and sees this, the one piece of advice i can give is replace the plugs, even if you get spark! for a couple bucks, it's worth it even if it is not the problem.
Good advice, and glad that you got it running again! Way to stay at it, so many have a problem and end up giving up on a GT and get something else. That 318 taken care of will out last a lot of us! Of course some of us are worrying about making it to tomorrow!!! :ROF
Well is it the long plug wire going to the running cylinder? If so put it on the bad cylinder and see if it fires. This will tell you if you just need to replace a plug wire. Both sides of the coil fire at the same time so you don't have to worry about moving the wire on the coil. Also if those are original plug wires then it's time to change them anyways IMO.
I would put a wood dowel through the plug hole to the cylinder and turn the engine over by hand and see if the piston is moving. If it is then you may have a valve sticking. In that case I'd try doing a Seafoam treatment on the engine to see if it won't release it.
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