turn on lights-tractor dies? =solved=!!

[tj13 0]

tractor runs great until i turn on the headlights,it kills the engine.i checked the voltage at the battery. 12+ not running. running 14+. turn on lights and a minor voltage drop,then the enginge sputters and turns off. this happens in gear or neutral. any thoughts? 1994 soveriegn 18 hydro.==== thanks to all who helped. the problem was one of the headlight wires would lightly touch the bolt head that holds the muffler cover on.it was very intermitent,it had very fine melt marks on it. it had just exposed enough wire to create a short.thanks again.

[UCD 14]

First thing clean your battery cables and other connections. If those are clean and a good connection Get battery load tested it might be bad will not hold load.

[tj13 0]

new battery. i checked it at my freinds shop,all o.k. cleaned many connections. tried about an hour ago,still doing it.more info- thursday i ran for at least 45 minuets before it died,today it was variable= in between instant and half an hour.

[Simplicity314 0]

If it's erratic like thatI doubt it's because of voltage draw or drain. I bet you have a bare wire somewhere in the lighting sys. that is grounding out intermittenly(sp.)with tractor vibration.

[tj13 0]

i thought about the bare wire,i started looking in that direction.could a bare wire from the lights cause it to shutdown?

[stevenj 4]

Not sure if your tractor has a circuit breaker or not, but if you have a short to ground between the light switch and the lights, when you turn on the lights, the circuit breaker will trip and the engine will die. If you turn the light switch off, then turn the key off, the circuit breaker will reset and then you can start the tractor again.

[Doll 0]

an MFG number would be a big help here. Sounds to me like you have a bad power feed to your ignition switch. ( Thinking Kohler twin here ) Battery fired ignition and the lights are pulling enough power to starve the points. I can think of a couple of ways to test it. The first being to have a jumper wire hooked to the battery at the positive post. Start the engine and turn on the lights. Once it starts missing, hook the jumper to the hot lead for the lights.. If the engine clears, You know to trace your hot lead from your ignition switch back to the battery. ( or the battery lead at the solenoid ) You can also check the voltage at the coil and see if you have a voltage drop on the hot lead when the lights are turned on. Ignition switch could be faulty.

[tj13 0]

thanks for the replys,where would i find the cicuit breaker? mfg# 1692143 i will try these suggestions shortley.

[ambler 0]

Its behind the battery

[HubbardRA 19]

Doesn't that tractor have a magneto? I thought that Kohler had gone to magneto ignition by 1994. I'm not familiar with that engine well enough to know if it is battery ignition like the smaller K series or if it has a magneto. If it has a magneto, then even if the lights were running the battery down, the engine shouldn't die. Sounds like both the light wire and the kill wire are shorted together. Most likely a bad ignition switch. If it is battery ignition, then I agree with the comments in the other posts.

[Simplicity314 0]

Called it! Woo-hoo!

[Guest]

Did I miss something? What was the solution?

[D-17_Dave 12]

Check the second part of the first post.