RedNeckGeek
Super Member
- Joined
- Jan 1, 2011
- Messages
- 8,754
- Location
- Butte County & Orcutt, California
- Tractor
- Kubota M62, Kubota L3240D HST (SOLD!), Kubota RTV900
My poor L3240 sits outside in the weather, and after the last rain the starting started to act up. The LCD display would come on, then blank out. It would crank then stop before it caught. But after it got going it seemed fine. Until this morning. It did it's intermittent LCD thing, then the screen went blank and I couldn't hear any relays clicking. So I got out the maintenance manual, checked the battery terminals (the battery had just been replaced and both were still shiny), checked the big fuses under the hood, and ended up at the starter switch. Had to remove the plastic cowl around the instruments and switch (4 12 mm bolts), then started probing with a volt meter. The center terminal had 12.8V, but nothing was getting to any of the rest. Removed the switch, then tested the short wiring harness and got the same result. Got out some DeOxIt and shot some through the key hole, worked the key back and forth a few times, and in the process noticed another hole low on the housing below the lock. Squirted more DeOxIt in there, but it didn't seem to help. So I went inside and started to fix lunch.
Noticed there was no peanut butter in the frige, so it was time to open a fresh jar and stir it up. It's one of those two ingredient PBs; just peanuts and salt, so the oil tends to separate. A few years ago a friend was cleaning out his garage and gave me an old pneumatic paint shaker, and it does a great job shaking up peanut butter, too. So I fired up the compressor and brought the Kubota RTV back up to the garage so I could roll a tire over the paint shaker base to hold it in place. Mounted the jar, plugged in the paint shaker, and off she went.
Now what to do while I waited? Well, I was using the dump bed of the RTV for a bench while I worked on the tractor, and the switch and DVM were still sitting there, along with the manual. So in a last ditch effort to save fifty-five bux on a new switch, I set about rechecking the switch. This time, instead of 3 meg Ohms between the positive pin and any of the others, it was only half an ohm. Huh? Checked again, same again, even to the start pin. Shaking my head I walked back down to the tractor, plugged in the switch, and the darn thing roared to life. Literally. I'd opened the hand throttle all the way to get the cowl off, so just turned the key back off to end the excitement.
It seems that the time it took me to get the peanut butter a shakin' was enough for the DeOxIt to work its magic. Not the first time that stuff has come to my rescue, but perviously it worked right away. If something similar happens again, I'll still give it a dose of DeOxIt, but I'll go shake the peanut butter for a while before I give up on it.:laughing:
Noticed there was no peanut butter in the frige, so it was time to open a fresh jar and stir it up. It's one of those two ingredient PBs; just peanuts and salt, so the oil tends to separate. A few years ago a friend was cleaning out his garage and gave me an old pneumatic paint shaker, and it does a great job shaking up peanut butter, too. So I fired up the compressor and brought the Kubota RTV back up to the garage so I could roll a tire over the paint shaker base to hold it in place. Mounted the jar, plugged in the paint shaker, and off she went.
Now what to do while I waited? Well, I was using the dump bed of the RTV for a bench while I worked on the tractor, and the switch and DVM were still sitting there, along with the manual. So in a last ditch effort to save fifty-five bux on a new switch, I set about rechecking the switch. This time, instead of 3 meg Ohms between the positive pin and any of the others, it was only half an ohm. Huh? Checked again, same again, even to the start pin. Shaking my head I walked back down to the tractor, plugged in the switch, and the darn thing roared to life. Literally. I'd opened the hand throttle all the way to get the cowl off, so just turned the key back off to end the excitement.
It seems that the time it took me to get the peanut butter a shakin' was enough for the DeOxIt to work its magic. Not the first time that stuff has come to my rescue, but perviously it worked right away. If something similar happens again, I'll still give it a dose of DeOxIt, but I'll go shake the peanut butter for a while before I give up on it.:laughing:
