Thought I'd keep y'all up to date since there has been some interest in this in the past:
December 5, 2005 Remounted the positive battery cable to eliminate the short to ground, then hooked up the battery bank and tried flipping the start switch. Nothing. I jumpered the start terminal on the solenoid and it clanked nicely, but there was no sign of engine turnover. I didn't have any more time to mess with it today as I spent most of the day working on the snowblower. (Again.) I don't even know if it was drawing any starting current, nor whether the feeble battery bank was capable of driving anything more than the solenoid. December 12, 2005 With holiday parties temporarily put to bed I was able to look at the genset again. Armed with a couple sheets of enlarged schematics, two as-charged-as-they'll-ever-be crap batteries and the Fluke I went out into the cold. With the battery bank hooked up, I was able to find that +24V was not making it to the Start/Stop switch, yet did make it to the emergency stop switch. According to the schematic the most likely offending party was the overspeed switch, or if not installed, Jumper #1. I looked at the terminal block where the switch would have been hooked up, and found a jumper. OK; what I did _not_ find were _two_ screws hooking the jumper to the block: I only found one. So I raided the junkbox to find a suitable screw and hooked it back up properly. With that done, the Start switch now had power to it, so I flipped it on. CHUNK! The starter relay fired. A second or so later, it was CHUNKA-CHUNKA-CHUNKA... The feeble battery bank was dying, causing rapid cycling of the solenoid. One of the two 12V batteries reads 0V during this condition. The motor never did turn over, but according to the Fluke I only was getting 100A or so at the peak of current draw. Hardly enough, I'd think. I'm going to need some real battery power to proceed much further. I put the feebs back on the charger anyway. December 13, 2005 I cleaned up and resoldered the ruined positive battery clamp back to its cable. (Acetylene sure makes this kind of heavy heating a snap.) I hope this will end up being part of the inter-battery tie cable. Interestingly enough, the clamp is brass, not the more common lead. I pulled the spark plugs and tried 'starting' it again. No joy, so I put a wrench on the tail of the exciter and twisted at the same time. It didn't take much of a twist and the set started turning, about a half second before the batteries died again. I really need new batteries! ...I went out and bought two used batteries at the U-Pull. $26, I hope that this will cure the problems for now. When I got home, I put them on the charger for tomorrow. I bought the two biggest batteries they had. Not matched in size, c'est la vie. December 14, 2005 I hooked up the 'new' batteries, and hit the start button. WOOKA-WOOKA-WOOKA-WOOKA... Hooray! The thing spun over easily, at a pretty good clip. I put the spark (paint!) plugs back in, and tried again. WOOKA-WOOKA-WOOKA-WOOKA... Cool, this thing is going to work! It draws more than 350A initial starting current, this drops off pretty good once it's spinning. I notice no sparking or any other evilness on the exciter/starter, so that's OK. The shop rag over the exhaust port bellies up nicely when it's spinning. -- Jim
