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Faunsdale, AL | How are you measuring the voltage? One way is to measure between top terminal of solenoid and terminal on end of starter. Are you certain your batteries are good and all connections, especially the grounds to the tractor frame are clean and tight. The two battery grounds are usually attached to the bolts that hold the top cover on the transmission and can be corroded or even loose if someone has been into the transmission lately.
The 18 volts sounds pretty low, but not extremely bad. Have you tried shaking the steering wheel back and forth while crankng? It is possible that the solenoid isn't making real good contact and some voltage is being lost in it or the strap connection between it and the starter motor terminal. I like to take all these connections loose (carefully,,,,,,,,,,,,,,after taking battery cables loose) and scrape them or wire brush before replacing everything.
The solenoid terminals are made so that they can be loosened up, pushed in a quarter inch or so and then turned a half turn to put a new surface in position for the solenoid movable contact disk to hit. If you have never done one, you just remove all the nuts on the lower large terminal and the two small terminals (crank and ground) so you can carefully push them through the cap as you remove it. The upper large terminal that the battery cable hooks to has no internal connections, so it comes out with the cap without loosening the nut. Once you get the cap off, then carefully bend the little retainer tab up so you can push the lower stud back out of the terminal and rotate it. Once it is back in place, bend the tab back to hold it while you work the cap back on. It's a bit fiddly, but you can get a lot more life out of a starter solenoid by rotating the contacts.
On the starter motor itself, a stuck brush could cause your problem, but the starter is usually so weak, you would notice something was seriously wrong with it. | |
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4010 starter
