woods 1855 with kohler m18qs issues

rfdff13

New User
so i have this turd of a mower. been having issues with it starting and running and dying randomly. figured out the coil was bad. got a new coil and set it. now it would fire and die immediatly. would not continue to run, or actually fully start. killed the battery a few times and had it on the charger, while it was on the charger charging i had forgot that the key was in the run position still. a min after starting the battery charger smoke came from the coil. tested it and its garbage now.

ive never seen that happen so i went to the book and went in to the wiring and this thing has stuff bypassed and spliced here and there. but every search comes up with nothing. the wire to the coil has 12v going to it in run and start...but from what i understand this is suppose to be basically a neutral wire until the safety switch applies a ground, correct. also the yellow wires to the seat safety switch has .5 volts to one side and 0 on the other and both black read 0. but i dont think this has ever worked but still mowed just fine. now bypassing this would be easy.

so does anyone know about the coil tho. 12 volt should not go to the coil as the magneto on the flywheel would generate the current correct?
 
Sounds like you have the wrong ignition switch, and it supplying the coil/magneto with battery voltage in the "RUN" position, instead of simply shorting it to ground in the "OFF" position.

That's EASY to do, as LGT ignition switches that LOOK exactly the same on the OUTSIDE do different switching things on the inside.

Also, I am NOT at all familiar with your mower, but if it originally had a "K-series" engine instead of an "M-series" engine, and it has been swapped you MAY have the correct switch for the unit, but the wrong switch for the transplanted engine.
 
No it's the original motor, verified through woods.
It's been wired like this for years. When the original coil went out I just plugged in the new one. And when I got the no fire on the new one I went through the wiring a bit to make sure I had solid connection on everything. So maybe something just wasn't connected all the way then. So it would be ground going to the coil
 
O.k., A quick search on the 'net showed that it WAS a front deck mower. Grasshopper with different paint on it. Although I work for a Grasshopper dealer, about all Grasshopper tech. support will admit is that they made the mower. All service is supposed to go through a Woods dealer.

I recall working on a similar grasshopper once that had all kinds of start/run issues. Had a Briggs & Stratton Vanguard on it. lots of cut/ spliced/ jumped wires on that one too. After becoming totally frustrated finding and fixing different 'upgrades', what we eventually did was replace the complete wiring harness with a new one. It fixed all the start/run issues.

You can, (if you are patient and persistent enough) obtain a wiring schematic from Woods. Trace every wire on there and verify that it goes where it is supposed to go and nowhere that it is not supposed to connect. This should correct all your wiring problems, provided you have the correct ignition switch and with the possible exception that there are usually two diodes on the circuit board in those mowers, one of them could be bad and sending 12v to your coil.
 
Only ones that are still spliced are the one to the coil which runs to the fuse block, one to the rectifier, and the seat safety switch. The rest I got pinned down
 
The Kohler M18 has electronic magnetos if they get a taste of 12 V they are fried they are a ground only to stop the engine and an open circuit to run on the back side of the ignition switch is a terminal with an M on it or near it that is the mag connection a wire can go from there straight to the ignition module (coil) NO 12 volts. the rest of the safety switch will have to be per a wire diagram
GB in MN
 
ummm? partly right. NOTHING to that wire if you want the machine to start and run. Ground when you want to shut it off. You can run that wire to a toggle switch, with the wire from the other side of the switch going to GROUND
 

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