Saturday March 19, 2016 Guerneville CA.
Doing Repairs today
I decided to stay home today and get some things accomplished that needed to get done.
I started out working on the Yamaha G19e golf cart. First I jacked it up to get the rear wheels off the ground. Then I turned it on and tried moving switches and wires and things to see if I could at least make it go a little, but nothing.
So I rounded up my electrical diagrams for this machine and pulled the main computer controller socket off and started measuring the voltage on pins to locate the problem.
It turned out that pin 11, the one that was corroded and I repaired the other day was not making the solenoid kick in. Humm, maybe my repair to the wire failed? To be sure, I jumped ground to the solenoid and it should have clicked, but it didn’t. Humm, it appears the new solenoid we just installed was defective. I did some banging on it and it finally clicked, but it stopped again, so it was bad for sure.
I removed this new solenoid and put the old one back on as I knew it worked. We just replaced this one because we were in there and thought we might as well do the solenoid at the time.
This the the new defective solenoid after I replaced it with the old one.
Started working on the van gauges
I put it all back together and took a break. After that I started to work on getting my new gauges for the van wired up. I was working on that when my brother Tom came by to check on his golf cart.
Moved to the old Ford tractor starter problem
He said he needed some help finding out why the old Ford tractor he got from my uncle when he died not long ago, wouldn’t turn over. He thought it might be the starter solenoid.
I measured things, then used a wire to jump the battery to the solenoid to make it work. It clicked,but didn’t turn over the starter.
I noticed one of his battery clamps was corroded so we got it apart, cleaned it up and put it back together.
Some more checking and I determined the starter was bad and needed to come out. I sat back while Tom removed the starter.
Testing the old starter
Once the starter was out, I put it on the floor and got some jumper cables and tried to make it work by jumping it directly to the battery. At first it wouldn’t go, but eventually it started to turn, but not with much enthusiasm. I took off the brush inspection cover on the end of the starter and had a look. I could see a lot of wear on the armature where the brushes were contacting that looked pretty bad. I suggested he have it rebuilt which he is going to do.
Here’s the starter after we got it out and tested.
Planted a few more strawberry plants
I mentioned to Tom I’d gotten some of his old strawberry plants and he said he had some left over ones from this years planting I could have. So I got what he had and planted some around my potato patch. I also studied the watering system in my potato patch as I need to improve it to make it cover better, so I made some plans after tinkering with it for a bit.
I spent the rest of the day sitting around in the yard until the evening coolness moved in and I moved in to the house.
That was my day.