L3301 starting issues & PTO not engaging

[Gnarly Acres]

Noob here so not very learned in operations. Often times when I go to start my tractor nothing happens. A friend told me to push down on the PTO lever. It works every time. Bought it new in 2016. Has 230 hrs & is a HST model. My question is what causes this & what痴 the fix? Also just yesterday I went to use the bush hog & when I engaged the pto nothing happened. The pto lever went 斗oose & moves freely. Had used it the day before & it worked fine although I did hear a bit of rattling when engaged which I think was a precursor to yesterday. Any thoughts?

 

[RickB]

Time to bend over and inspect the linkage from the lever to the chassis.

 

[Fallon]

There is a safety switch up by the lever if I recall. That prevents you from starting the machine with the PTO engaged. That's probably looser or out of adjustment.

The cable can also stretch or gum up causing failure to engage or disengage. I had to lube up that cable on mine old L3200 a few times.

 

[Jstpssng]

I have the same tractor and sometimes need to jiggle the lever on mine a couple of times to completely disengage it. That will happen especially if I neglected to disengage the PTO before shutting the engine off, or stalled it when my winch snubbed up.