212 john deer

212Dean

New member
i am puzzled my early 80's john deerwill not turn over without the jumper cables attached. With them attached it will turn over and start, take cable off it stalls. Checked battery for volts and dead cells check ok. whats going on.
 

bordercollie

Gold Site Supporter
Gold Site Supporter
How old is your battery?check cca in the manual or online required for the model. It may not have enough umph under use if it is going bad, while testing ok while not being used. I assume this is a gas engine since it is dying after the booster cables are removed. That is where I would start. good luck
 

Peanut

Well-known member
SUPER Site Supporter
if it jumps off with cables and runs until you take the cables off i would say it could be the stater. all elgines produce their own current to run on and also charge their batteries. it's just like a car alternator if you have dead batteries on a car you can jump it off and the car will run off the current coming from the alternator. my bet would be the stater sounds like the stater isn't producing any curent.oh one more thing if youdidn't use the tractor for a while i have seen this happen where spiders will build a web on the flywheel and when it turns over the web gets tangled in between the flywheel and pickup coil try taking a look at the flywheel and pickup coil .also if there is any rust on the wlywheel sand it with some sand paper .if the pickup coil can't get a good zap from the flywheel you get no spark.i'm not sure if the pickup coil works as the stater or not .i have tuned up many briggs and stratton engines and the kits always come with a new stater it's a little round capacitor tube thing that connects to the pickup coil on the flywheel.hope this helps you out.
 

Kanook

Active member
Are you attaching the jumper cables directly to the battery pos and neg posts or are you running the neg cable to chassis ground? If your neg cable cable is being attached to chassis gnd then you gnd cable from battaery to chassis is bad.....otherwise I'd swap out the battery....and take it from there...I've seen a battery with a bad post (internal to battery) cause similar problem. Meter reads 12-13vdc but load won't work.
 
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