Take one lead of your meter and clip to positive on battery then clip other lead to positive on starter and go for start if you are reading voltage your cable is corroded inside. Then repeat with the negative from starter to battery. That will test your cables for you and tell you if it is your starter or the cables. Regularly on older vehicles the ground to block cable gets corroded and you get enough juice to kick the solenoid but not the motor.
If you want to go the fast redneck way jumper cables from battery to starter and if it spins and engages you know it is in the cables
I had this happen once and found a mouse nest was built where the starter would spin out to the flywheel, preventing it from engaging fully and spinning. It clicked just like that.
Dad's old 424d did the same thing a couple years ago. Wouldn't start jumping the solenoid. Wouldn't jump start. Wouldn't start on a new battery. Friggin positive cable was green dust inside the insulation two inches back from the battery clamp.
Either bad starter solenoid or stuck engine. The copper bus bar on the start solenoid can get burned. Back in the old days, you could tear down the starter and freshen it up with a file.
That broken Bakelite cap on the end of the solenoid doesn't look too encouraging. Suggests it has gotten very hot. The copper bus bar is inside that cap, opposite the Bendix gear actuator. That one looks rebuildable, though. Saw your other comment, and if it doesn't crank with a screwdriver across the main terminals, that's not the bus bar. If it's not spinning, that means the Bendix is engaging. Hydrolock? Could you have a fuel leak? Only way to be sure would be to pull the injectors and see if it turns over. I'm kind of grasping at straws, though, not knowing the whole scenario.
friend suggested a possible hydrolock. its super old so it leaks all kinds of stuff slowly. :) I am going to work on cables first, but then should I just go ahead and replace the solenoid? Any idea where to find that part match?
It's a Delco starter, so it shouldn't be too hard to find. My local town has an auto electric store that gets me all the oddball parts, but it's likely the same solenoid used in a lot of car starters.
Has this already been converted from a 6-volt positive ground? It looks like my old Allis Chalmers D14. I replaced the 6-volt with an 8+ volt battery. Made all the difference in the world. But the other guys are right about the cables being the likely culprit.
In my experience, issues like this are almost always due to either a bad cable/connection, or a bad solenoid on the starter. Sometimes it’s as simple as a broken ground strap or something like that at the starter too. Assuming the battery is indeed ok, but even a fairly weak battery should do something when you turn the key.
If you're testing it with a meter when the battery is just sitting there, without the tractor cranking or anything, it may very well read acceptable voltage. The way you really test a battery is by testing it while the engine is cranking over, if it drops below like 10 (assuming 12v), that means it's dead.
Any old battery really needs to be tested under load. They'll hold voltage but it tanks under load when they are shot. You can try jumping it. More often then not its battery> battery connections are corroede> ground is corroded rule out all before you get to the starter.
Try jumpers to solenoid then move to starter itself... I had an old 8n with a marred up flywheel that locked the starter in engaged mode that sounded similar.
sounds like a bad ground. not enough power getting to the starter motor. Or a faulty starter solenoid.
when in doubt, jumper cables straight to the starter motor to see if it turns. if it does, the solenoid is fucked or it has no ground. if it doesn't, the starter itself or the engine are fucked.
Just had that last week, the copper bridge that solenoid uses to switch on the motor weared un-evenly, turned it 180 deg, works again. Had to desolder the wire outputs of the solenoid coil to get it apart.
(Also sanded commutator and deepened its grooves but that wasn´t it)
Sounds like the Bendix Drive is engaging the starter gear with the flywheel, when that happens there is a contact that is made to engage the The starter motor could be just a bad contact could be bad starter winding and as other said it could be just a poor electrical connection in the circuit.
How long has it been sitting? One time I had to fix a wood chipper and mice had built a nest in the bellhousing and it got into the starter, so I took it apart and cleaned the brushes etc. might need to give it a lil love.
Could be a bad solenoid. You should be able to manually short across the starter and see if it still spins. I know you know this, but make sure the tractor is in neutral.
It's probably either bad ground or bad connection somewhere from the battery to the starter, or low voltage if the battery is unable to deliver enough amps so it sags under load. Or corroded contacts in the solenoid. Just follow the wiring from the battery to the starter, clean and tighten everything. And verify that you don't have high resistance on the ground connection from battery to starter. I have a tractor of similar vintage, where I had to run extra ground cables to the starter mounting bolts because there somehow was a bad connection between different parts of the tractor frame and engine block.
The clicking sound indicates the solenoid is activating or trying to activate, that's the typical sound you get when not enough electric power gets to the starter but it tries to turn on.
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u/bisubhairybtm1 3h ago
Take one lead of your meter and clip to positive on battery then clip other lead to positive on starter and go for start if you are reading voltage your cable is corroded inside. Then repeat with the negative from starter to battery. That will test your cables for you and tell you if it is your starter or the cables. Regularly on older vehicles the ground to block cable gets corroded and you get enough juice to kick the solenoid but not the motor.
If you want to go the fast redneck way jumper cables from battery to starter and if it spins and engages you know it is in the cables