lawn tractors - tale of woe / kill switch?

[Jules]

Bah, latest mowing shenanigans... I stopped the mower yesterday, did some stuff, went to start it back up - and the starter solenoid decided to jam in the 'on' position. Cue starter churning away and turning the engine over, with no way to stop the darn thing because the path from the battery to the starter via the solenoid is all via bolted terminals.

I dashed up to the workshop, grabbed the relevant spanner, dashed back to the mower, by which point there's smoke pouring out of the starter - grrr!

The windings are looking nicely cooked, although it was actually the lower bearing (it's a vertical starter) which failed, and the shell started spinning in the bakelite (so it appears) housing. Eventually it wore enough that the starter jammed solid. Thankfully I at least got back to it before the battery went bang.

Anyway, I'm now pondering a kill-switch between battery and everything else, just in case. Any ideas if a domestic light switch might be up to the job? The starter's pretty weedy, but OTOH I bet initial current is pretty high. (The alternative, I suppose, is to just keep a 7/16" spanner taped to the mower somewhere - I can isolate verything else by pulling the crimp terminal off the main fuse, just not the starting circuit)

Thankfully I know where I can grab an identical starter (which *should* be rebuildable if needs be), so that's no biggie...

cheers

Jules

[Baz]

[Jules]

cars. Price doesn't seem bad either, so it's possibly an option - just curious as to whether a light switch stands a chance of working (as I have several in the workshop liberated when we changed from cream to black switches). Either way I think one or t'other will fit nicely under the seat though, where it can be reached easily but not accidentally knocked.

cheers

Jules

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Jules saying something like:

Norfolk and Chance.

Use a rallysport battery isolating switch and don't piss around.

[newshound]

> > Baz

Great link! I have one that looks just like that on my horse lorry and people keep telling me you can't buy spare keys. Even if it isn't right, it's worth having one of them in the spares box.

[Andy Dingley]

No, but you can make them pretty easily. It's a plastic stick with a pin sticking out of the side, and a handle on top.

I used to have one on the front wing of a rallycar. Gave a mate a lift to the station one day, and as he set off through the barriers he thought it would be a jolly jape if he pulled the key and did a runner with it...

Showing a pencil down there, and a bit of gaffer tape, got me home.

[newshound]

I did try making one, but made the peg a bit too big and never quite got round to trimming it. Hadn't realised it's an axial push to operate, I'd assumed the peg was operating something.