My WD quit running, went to start it and there seems to be a short somewhere. I had the starter rebuilt and tested, new battery also. Motor will turn over great with switch OFF, but when I turn switch on it seems like there is a electrical surge and the starter will start to smoke. I have rewired all but the battery cables. Any suggestions?

If it turns over just fine with the ignition off but gives problems with ignition on I would suspect that the mechnical advance in the distributor is stuck. One way to help diagnose this is back the timing off and try to start. If the engine starts and sounds like it is loboring that is the problem.

Not a real bigie to fix just some time to disasemble the distributor and free & lube things up.

If I am guessing right what is happening is the fuel charge is igniting before TDC and trying to spin the engine backwards against the starter thus making it lobor extra hard and thusly smoke.

HTH
JT

JT- Thanks for the info, this was exactly the problem.

Sounds like you have a dead short in the Ignition side of the system. Could be right at the switch or the switch itself being that it gets fed current from the Ammeter. Inspect your wiring, clean the battery ground lead also. If you need a switch or anything electrical, we can fix you up. Drop us a line if interested......
Steve/B&B Custom Circuits

I had the similar problem with mine and changed the battery cables and it worked fine.And the old ones looked fine to the eye.

Do you have a magneto or distributer ignition system? At any rate I can not see a corralation here. If the switch is on and you get the starter to smoke you have bad wiring somewhere. Does it smoke as soon as you turn on the switch or only when cranking with the switch on? This tractor should have a positive ground unless you have convereted it to 12 volts with an alternator. You must have a ground in the switch or wiring but that should not feed back through the starter?? Sorry I can not help more. I would take a meter and do resistance checks with switch on and off. You may be picking up a ground in your ign system but I can hardly see why that would make the starter smoke?

Dave-

I have a distributer. The starter doesn't smoke until I turn over the tractor. And it is postive grounded. I have all new wire and I disconected the switch and just twisted the wires togethter to elinate the switch. I will test the resistance thanks

Just a reminder that starter motors don't care whether you hook them up positive or negative ground, because the field and armature are wound in series. I would tend to think that smoking wires in the starter indicates a poor connection somewhere. The poor connection creates resistance; and resistance creates heat - easily enough to cause smoking.