OK, am I go crazy here or what? My neighbor has a Sears riding mower, maybe 7 years old, that starting more than a year ago would not always start. The symptom was he's turn the key and either:
It would spin over and start It would move the starter just a bit, not enough to spin it over even once It would just click
He finally decided to do something about it and asked me what I thought was wrong. He said when it first started having problems he replaced the battery and it made no difference. So, first thing I did was get a set of car jumper cables and hooked the ground lead from the battery to the engine. Then I connected the positive lead to the battery and held the other end directly on the starter connection terminal. I got a good spark and the starter moved, but only maybe
20 degrees of an engine rotation and then it just stopped.So, now it's looking like it's a bad starter, right? But, with him having tried to start it, I was not sure of how charged that battery really was. So, I go home and get a one year old auto battery that was sitting in my garage with a battery tender on it. I bring that over and try the same thing again, hooking it directly to the starter. Again, it did the exact same thing, just a small incremental rotation and then it stops.
So, I assure him that the starter is bad. He buys a new one and installs it himself. Two weeks later I ask him how he made out. He tells me it did the same thing with the new starter. He then called Sears service, who came out, told him it needed the valves adjusted, did that and charged him $200. WTF? The only interesting thing is he says it still occasionally hesitates and won't turn over immediately.
Am I missing something here? I can see how out of adjustment valves will result in loss of power or difficulty in starting, but it isn't possible for them to prevent the engine from turning over is it? I wish he would have called me when he put the new starter in so I could have seen it myself and done some more testing.