battery on lawn tractor

[clare]

The "active material" flakes off the plates and settles to the bottom, shorting the battery out. And sometimes the plate connectors just break.

[bob haller]

sitting for months with tractor not run causes the plates to sulphate, and the battery to fail.

worse if tractor is stored in a very cold or very hot place, your typical shed

[Jules Richardson]

Aha, thanks; I wasn't seeing how it'd really make a difference (and I assumed the batteries would be built to withstand it).

Yep... as mentioned in my other post, that's part of the reason I don't bother with a battery on the tractor - I can't be bothered keeping it on charge over the cold season (which is a long time up here in MN :-)

Now that did cross my mind - I can well believe that cheaper tractors don't have the kinds of charging systems that might be present on the more expensive ones, and that might be responsible for early failure; I was just surprised that the vibration could play a part, too.

Maybe it's worth putting a piece of rubber mat, mouse pad, or something like that under the battery to help dampen the vibration...

cheers

Jules

[mkirsch1]

=A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0I

Modern small engines have a rotor and stator underneath the flywheel that generate the electricity.

[clare]

Unless the starting motor has a gear drive. Actually, the TRUTH is, it is a lot easier to use agenerator as a starter on a small single cyl engine. The "starterator" is much more a modified generator than a modified starter.

[clare]

And true only if the battery goes dead while sitting. A fully charged battery cannot sulphate (and sulphation has nothing to do with vibration - which is what the question was about)

[clare]

           I

The flywheel IS the rotor