John Deere 2010 wont start

I cant get any spark at the gap at the points. Test light has power at points but wont generate a spark. I have replaced condenser, and points. Some times I will get spark the tractor will start and run a bit then its gone again. Any ideas?

Are the points gapped correctly?

Run a piece of paper through the points. Sometimes thay have a film on them that doesn"t conduct. Is your coil good? it should be ~1.6 ohms for a 6V system or ~3.2 ohms for a 12V system, If it"s 1.6ohms and you have a 12V system look for a resistor in the circuit to give you ~3.2 ohms total. If you don"t have that resistor and the system is 12V then your 1.6 ohm coil has probably overheated.

Make sure the coil is connected correctly. The primary wire from the coil to the distributor must be on the coil terminal that has the same sign as the battery ground. Negative battery ground coil wire to the distributor on the (-) terminal. Also make sure that your battery has a good ground connection to the chasis.

Rotate the engine til the points close and then with the key on, measure the voltage at the battery side of the coil and at the distributor side of the coil. You should have battery voltage on the battery side of the coil and near zero on the distributor side. If you don"t have battery voltage on the battery side, do you possibly have a burned out reisitor on the battery side of the circuit or an loose connection, bad key switch, or broken wire, etc in that part of the circuit. if you don"t have near zero voltage on the distributor side of the circuit, your distributor ground is bad.

How worn is the distributor bushing? Again with the points closed, push radially(from the side) on the distributor shaft and watch the points. They should not move at all. (Do this from several different directions.)If they do, your distributor bushing is worn and need replacing.

Do these checks systematically and if you change something see if you have a spark before you do anything else. This way you find the problem and know what it was.

Thanks Jerry. I will give that a try.

Once thing to check, that's different then most other tractors. 2010 has a ballast resistor built right into the key-switch. It was problematic, and Deere had kits to change it to an external resistor. When it goes bad, you get intermnittent ignition problems.

Easy check is to hot-wire the coil and see it works better.