Put in a new Battery, got nothin' - I am not dumb, but maybe I'm not bright?

[rontaki]

The poor man's tester...

Grab a piece of wire with 2 bare ends and short across the battery. You should get a nice shower of sparks. ;If not then your battery is very dead.

This isn't quantitative, but it is reasonably qualitative.

You can also go from the battery positive to the solenoid ignition wire on your starter (small wire)..

I've had battery terminals that seemed tight enough, but just bad of a connection that they stop conducting as soon as the starter is activated. But, before that lights and etc would have worked.

I used to hunt for a replacement battery for my old air-cooled VW, at the local recycle place that had drop-off for car batteries. First, I'd find a metal coat hanger to use as a "tester" to see which battery gave the best sparks when shorted. Usually the battery I picked had enough oomph in it to start and run the VW for quite some time, even if it would not turn over the big V8 it probably came out of. I was living on a shoestring, a frayed one at that!

 

[rontaki]

LOL... while I know lots of stuff, almost Cliff Claven like, I wasn't familiar with that term.
My wife is puzzled at times with my knowledge of seemingly useless information.

I'm often puzzled at my own store of useless information.

 

[GS650GL]

I would not recommend shorting across a battery with a wire to see if it sparks. It's tempting and lots of people do it, but I know three people that had a battery explode in their face when it sparked. Luckily two of them only had minor injuries, but one has permanent hearing damage from the explosion. Not trying to tell anybody what to do, just want everyone to be safe. I've seen lots of injuries in over 40 years working as a mechanic. I've had a few injuries myself but luckily not from a battery (yet).

 

[Fuddyduddy1952]

A few years ago helping a friend we had a spark and battery exploded. It was unbelievably violent and both instantly deaf and sprayed with sulfuric acid. We ran to a nearby water hydrant, used baking soda and deaf for a long time.
Luckily acid didn't spray our faces. We found battery case probably 100ft from truck.

 

[BleedingOrange]

Probably much safer and easier to carry a battery load tester to verify if a used battery is worth buying. it not only tells you if the voltage is good, but also if it can handle the starting load required to actually turn vehicles over.

 

[FreddyFlynn]

LADIES AND TRACTOR HEADS, MAY I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE. Epstein didnt k..oh wait wrong forum. After getting out the metal wire brushes, taking everything apart (finally have time to do so), getting a new 40 AMP green fuse, readdress every spin of the irons with small prayer, getting the mutimeter along every step back to the butt of line, using a tester light, and enjoying all of your advice, wisdom, even your electronic fist fights and peacocking, I give you....a WORKING TRACTOR!!! Yeahhh yeahhhh crowd goes wild ahhhhhhhhhh
THANK YOU for being there for me, a lot of this advice I believe is good for a lot of situations.
There will be a netflix remake.
You may ask, well Flynn, what was it, what was the cause. I do not know, all of those things I did and it came back from the dead. I am not sure of the one thing I did that was the silver bullet, I just know it started.

 

[SPYDERLK]

LADIES AND TRACTOR HEADS, MAY I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE. Epstein didnt k..oh wait wrong forum. After getting out the metal wire brushes, taking everything apart (finally have time to do so), getting a new 40 AMP green fuse, readdress every spin of the irons with small prayer, getting the mutimeter along every step back to the butt of line, using a tester light, and enjoying all of your advice, wisdom, even your electronic fist fights and peacocking, I give you....a WORKING TRACTOR!!! Yeahhh yeahhhh crowd goes wild ahhhhhhhhhh
THANK YOU for being there for me, a lot of this advice I believe is good for a lot of situations.
There will be a netflix remake.
You may ask, well Flynn, what was it, what was the cause. I do not know, all of those things I did and it came back from the dead. I am not sure of the one thing I did that was the silver bullet, I just know it started.

View attachment 4417012

So the answer is: Take apart tractor. Reassemble carefully.

 

[grsthegreat]

Congrats on getting her running again. Deka (East Penn Mfg) make great batteries….even USA manufactured.

 

[newbury]

Congrats and thanks for wrapping up the thread.

 

[anomad]

I'm often puzzled at my own store of useless information.

I prefer to describe myself as the librarian of esoteric knowledge - LOL...