Hello from Central PA. In my younger years I was into the old tractor scene a cub cadet, a few wheel horses, even a david bradley, mostly something to play around on, I had an old cub cadet 70 with a snow blow and wheel weights that was a beast. I was looking for something for my son to play around on and grow into the mechanical side of things, I had picked him up a project tractor but as I dug into it I found it was more of a project than it was really worth, especially since just about anything safety related was hacked out of the unit. I happened to spot a simple add for a cub cadet tractor that they were looking to get rid of at a price that I assumed had to be a typo. I reached out to them and confirmed it wasn't a typo, the owner had passed away and they just wanted to get it out of their yard. So away I went to pick up my first cub cadet tractor in over 20 years. What I ended up getting was a 169 in fair condition with a 50 inch deck that will need some work. All I was told is it had electrical issues. I pulled down the service manual and started digging into the unit. The original key ignition is there but no key, an aftermarket ignition was put in where the filler hole, I believe I've seen cigarette lighters in there before, is at, that didn't have a key either. I picked up a cheap 3 position ignition from the auto store and armed with the wiring diagram started getting things hooked back up the proper way. When I did I discovered I only had about 6 volts at various places on the system, such as the coil. After a bit of digging, I discovered the drop was on the other side of the charge indicator. Here they had an aftermarket sunpro voltmeter installed there instead of an ampmeter. I just bypassed that for now and proceeded to get good voltage everywhere it needed to be and got the motor turning over. Now I'm on to my next project and that is getting spark. The points weren't making contact, I did clean them up a bit and got contact but I still don't have spark, I ohmed out the spark plug wire and found depending on which way I flex that it sometimes has continuity but most of the time it doesn't. That issue seems to be in the wire not in a connection, so I'm going to be getting a new wire locally. I also ordered a kit with new points, a condenser, and spark plug. Hopefully after all that I'll have spark, leaving the wild card as the coil. With everything else being messed up I wanted to go over how it was wired when I got it and see if someone could confirm things are backwards. The power from the ignition went into the negative side of the coil and the points and condenser lead hooked up to the positive side. The wiring diagram would seem to indicate that the power from the ignition should go into the positive side of the coil. I assume the condenser also hooks up to the positive then the lead from the points goes to the negative.
Thanks!
Thanks!
Comment