John Deere 430 won't crank

[canucklehead]

Have a JD 430 garden tractor with 3 cylinder yanmar diesel. It won't crank, not getting any noise at all. Positive wire from battery goes directly to side of starter, so i can't figure out how to check if turning key sends juice to starter.

On the display panel I'd normally see a battery symbol, glow plugs and something else. I see 2 of the symbols, but the battery symbol doesn't light up now.

Battery is good. Not positive on starter. The fact I'm not getting dash displaying the Batt symbol makes me wonder if there isn't a loose wire or fuse, or other issue.

I'm sure this is simple but I can't seem to get started at square one.

Also had issues in the past with this unit dieing, played with wires, and then it just ran again.

thanks.

 

[canucklehead]

Pet peeve when people post their questions and problems, use the resources of the kind folks on this site, and then don't have the courtesy to post their final fix to help others that might do a search, etc... So I am posting this fix and I hope it helps someone else.

AT LAST!!!! Found it!! Here is the culprit: this tractor had some electrical issues and my neighbour fixed it, and i bought it from him. I don't see any obvious fuses, other than 2 in-line plug/blade fuses. I don't think JD made it with these fuses, so I think these are replacements to the factory wiring.

I played with it and got it running, then we mowed for .5 hours and it wouldn't re-start. DANG!! back to the drawing board. So I removed battery & tray for the 20th time. I used jumper cable from battery to the leads and then tried wiggling wires. There were a couple of suspect wires, but they didn't produce the symptom of cutting out the battery discharge light on the display. Then I wiggled this inline fuse. It would cut out the dischage symbol on dash. The insulation is not broken, so i assume loose connection inside. I can't tell you how frustrating it is to try and find a poor electrical connection when it is internal. At least a frayed wire or bad connection is a place to start looking. This one is a pig in a poke.