Can somebody please come and steal my tractor?

[SusanO]

You will have to push it down the road because it won’t start.

I can’t figure this out. When I had the initial problems my farrier came and tightened some connections and the problem was fixed. I finally used up the hay on my trailer and got the tractor in to be serviced. They could not find a problem and the guy said usually when you had a bad connection the problem was grounding.

So after months of no problems this morning it would not start out of the blue. This has to be a day when we have had a lot of rain and the bad feet horses have been in their stalls a lot and I have 7 mucktubs to get across the pasture and dump. It has not even hesitated before today.

Just doesn’t even try to crank. Battery is fine. Lights and horn work fine. Warning lights and glow plug lights work fine. Not solenoid. Not starter. You turn the key, wait until the glowplug light goes off and turn it the rest of the way to crank and it does nothing. I cleaned out some shavings that had blown in around the battery. All the connections were tight. Just had all fluids drained and replaced and no leaks. It is sitting in the barn out of the rain.

So if it is a bad connection somewhere could the damp air be messing up the connection? I moved the seat around and that did not seem to help. I am just stumped as to why it is fine for months and then out of the blue it won’t start. I am going to take the hair dryer down there and blow it on the battery to dry the damp air around it. None of my other lawn mowers start so why should it be any different!

[psb]

Mine does this sometimes. My dirt guy figured out that the accelerator/reverse pedal was still partially ‘engaged’. If I play with the pedal a bit and keep trying, eventually it will start. It’s an L series Kubota.

[SusanO]

I will try this. Lord knows I have tried everything else. Mine is a Mahindra. If somebody cough cough steals this one I will buy a Kubota. Not impressed with the durability of Mahindra.

[FitToBeTied]

Check the safety switches under the seat, on the brake and clutch. If they are loose or damaged you tractor wont start. I hate them and just hard wire them together.

[clanter]

the problem may be inside the cable, has a resistance test been run on the cables when they are disconnected?

[SusanO]

Update - it started!!! Not when I went down to the barn and tried again this AM. Same performance. So I took my hair dryer and I blew warm dry air all over the battery connections under the hood. Then I played with the forward/reverse pedals. Then I played with the 4WD levers since that was the last time I drove the tractor I had to put it in 4WD to get through the mud up the hill. Something worked!!! I left it running for a while and had to escape to the house for something cold to drink.

Not sure which helped. Next time I will isolate the remedies and try to figure out what thing worked.

[Texarkana]

My Mahindra never starts without mechanical intervention.

The only nice thing I can say about it is it exists. And when it’s running, it will get the job done… if it doesn’t break down on you, which is always a possibility.

I have to bush hog tomorrow so I need my husband tomorrow show me what mechanical voodoo we have to do this week to keep the thing alive.

[SusanO]

Yours must be the sibling to mine. When mine works it doesn’t break down. But this refusing to start out of the blue is infuriating. I need to bush hog with mine but I am scared to deal with PTO. Probably would send it into death throes.

And it started again after I took a stall cleaning break. It is going to wait for a very bad time to refuse to work again.