Allis D17 wiring problem

Hi. We have a D17, I believe a Series III, and the wiring for the starter is giving us fits. We had to replace the starter and have it in place on the frame. We"ve also replaced the starter solenoid and there"s a new battery with new cables.

It"s wired as a negative ground. When we turn the ignition key, there is a puff of smoke from the left side of the solenoid. I"m afraid we may have the wiring replaced incorrectly.

Would anyone be kind enough to share a wiring diagram for the D17 gasoline engine, specifically the starter?

That's a simple circuit. The solenoid and starter don't care about polarity. You can have the battery cable on either side of the solenoid and it won't make any difference. I would look very close at the solenoid and cables looking for rust/corrosion or signs of extreme heat. Poor connections will get very hot while cranking the engine. Poor connections also can cause slow cranking too.

That's called a smoke test.
Sorry you failed the test.
Probably dirty and loose.
The wire could be dirty and loose inside the connector also.

Hey IHF,

Am no expert myself. In speaking with non-Allis guys it comes down to the solenoid is either ground or 12v activated... I don't know.

Gonna get mine bench-tested tomorrow.

To wire the ignition switch you'd either:

1] Run a wire from case/chassis ground to one side of the switch & back from switch to that 6/32 center-post in the middle of the solenoid.

2] Or run from battery hot to switch and return from switch to 'post'.

In getting that smoke puff you might want determine which way it's been set up and do the opposite. A natural inclination might be to run the 12v setup- I would have if not talking with someone from a tractor supply place first.

The solenoid grounds through it's bracket. The wire from the switch is "hot" when the key is turned to the start position. A-C did not use a solenoid with 2 small posts on it. The 2 small post solenoid is a Ford automotive type. Either way, Madison's scenario 1 will not work under any circumstances.

Thank you all for the replies.

Here's what we know at this point... Not having seen these but still needing to attempt to get the tractor running tonight we tried putting the battery back to the negative ground setup as the I&T manual indicated. However, this resulted in only a couple of clicks and nothing more. It was dark at that point, so I'm not certain if there was more smoke involved.

A suggestion from my electrician son was to remove power connectors from the battery and run the positive from the battery to the terminal on the starter - if this produced action in the starter, we could focus on there being a short in the wiring between the solenoid and starter or battery and solenoid. This produced no action or sound.

Connecting the negative ground to the starter resulted in a little bit of arc and so we only had that connection for a split-second before stopping.

With no other connections to the starter - no ground, no hot - we used a separate battery and jumper cables in this scenario:

hot to hot (ground to chassis)
neg to neg (pos. ground to chassis)

Neither of these scenarios produced any action or sound. Thinking that the starter might be bad, we decided to remove it only to find that the bendix had kicked out the starter gear and it's now "stuck" in the engine.

I think we need to start over. If I'm understanding correctly, we need to:

1] check all cabling for any bare/broken spots, replace as necessary
2] pos. ground to chassis, neg. to solenoid, solenoid to switch, switch to starter.

Do I have that right?

If the starter is wired backwards from what Allis specifies (wired for pos. power instead of pos. ground), do we have to swap for a different starter or could we reverse the ground on the tractor so that it's a neg. ground with no ill effect?

Thanks.