Is my starter ready to go?

[Justinc 8]

It all started the other day while turning on and shutting off the tractor while pulling a cart full of mulch/weeds/grass & dirt. I was doing some land scaping and removing all the old crap from around the house so naturally i'd pull up to a spot, load up the cart and then move the tractor down about 10 feet, turning it on and shutting it off each time. Well I noticed that a few times during restart that the starter struggled a bit, almost as if the battery was dying or the engine was a little tighter. If i turned the key and the starter was sluggish, i turned the key off, waited a second and then tried to start it again and just about every time on the 2nd try the starter sounded normal and it fired right up. Only once did it do this on a cold start in the garage but then again on the 2nd try it was back to normal. Otherwise the tractor runs and performs fine, no misses, no stutters, no back fires and she's got close to a 1000 hrs on the clock. The only thing the previous owner said that he changed while owning it was the rear end so i'm assuming the starter is original. Now that i'm thinking about it, could it be a bad ground or connection not letting the full power of the battery get to the starter? I know in a situation like this anything could be possible but I mainly wanted to see if anyone else has ever encountered this issue.

 

Also, are there any year 520's that are not prone to the loose intake valve seat issue? Are the later models less likely to have the problem? I read somewhere that everyone that had issues with them were from a bad batch of parts used in the early 90's but who's to say whether thats correct or not.

 

Thanks people.

[SousaKerry 500]

I would start with the easy stuff. Clean all your battery and starter connections. Make sure the motor is well grounded. Also how old is tour battery and how many cranking amps?

[Justinc 8]

I'll check on that tonight when i get home, along with cleaning and checking all connections but everything looks very clean on the electrical side. I think the battery is newer and when it starts normally it turns over quick.

[ericj 1,576]

what tractor are you working with you mention 520's but don't say that's what you have. the valve seats more depend on over heating the motor then the year of the tractor and then maintenance that's been done to the tractor or the lack there of.

 

eric j

[daveoman1966 3,611]

This Onan has a starter similar to that of many cars. Over years and years, I can't tell you how many times I've had the same type of issue with car/truck starter and the fault was usually found to be dirty / corroded connections. It doesn't take much corrosion to defeat an electrical circuit and I suspect this would be your problem. Go thru the circuits and clean ALL the connections.

[dsholler 54]

You said you started the tractor, ran it for 10 feet (less than a minute? ) and then shut it off, and restarted it again... my guess is that you just ran down the battery.  I do not know exactly, but I think a safe guess would be to say you needed about 10 minutes of run time at full throttle to recharge the battery after a start... and when the battery is not putting out enough juice, the starter turns very slowly.  Deeply discharging a battery like that will also shorten its life considerably, and it is possible that a battery that was already old and questionable was pushed over the edge, so to speak, by the deep discharge.

 

Assuming that it started find before you did all this, I would put the battery on a regular charger until that says it is done.. and then test it with the meter.. if it checks out there, put it back in the tractor and see how it does. (Note, the meter does not always  tell you, I just got rid of a battery that would read 13.6 volts after I took it off the charger, but could barely spin the starter at full speed more than one time)

 

The turning the key off and waiting also is very typical of a discharged battery, as they tend to recover a bit if you wait.

 

I have also had a bad ground connection affect the starter, but at least in my case, the symptom was that it would sometimes just click and fail to start, and sometimes spin the starter just fine..
I do not know how the 520 is wired, but it is usually pretty easy to test the continuity on the ground strap.

Edited July 10, 2013 by dsholler

[Justinc 8]

Yes its a 520h, should have mentioned that.

Checked the voltage at the battery terminals and it read 12.7, its got 275 CCA.

Messing around with the idle tonight I started it about half a dozen times and it was fine each time. Found a little bit of corrosion on the positive cable at the battery but nothing extreme so who knows if that had any effect.

[dsholler 54]

Good thread discussion on battery voltage..

[Justinc 8]

Yes, a good read indeed.

 

let me veer off topic for a second. I noticed some grass starting to build up underneath of the rear head on the engine (closest to the driver). I'd like to get it cleaned out of there but how the heck to you remove the metal shroud that runs vertical and from the top and down around it? Seems like it will be pretty hard to just put the air chuck on the hose, fit it down in there and blow it all out. Whats the easiet way to go about this? The last thing I want is to pop a valve seat due to negligance on my part.

 

Thanks folks.

[Justinc 8]

Little update.

Its def a bad ground someplace because I removed all the fuses to blow grass and dust out from the fuse block and when I replaced them it wouldn't even crank. Shook it around a bit and it fired right up. Guess I know where to start looking.