As it always seems to happen, way out in the far corner of the meadow (almost) the hand throttle on the BX2370 suddenly jumps back to idle and won't stay where I put it.
The drive back to the barn was ...interesting... trying to hold the throttle open with one hand, and steer with the other. Hit a bump, VROOM....
Now the dealer has been absolutely sterling. I'd recommend these guys anytime. I called the next morning, and managed to stump them with this one. But the guy says, "I'm going to go out in the lot, take a look, and call you back. I'll talk you through where to find it."
He called back in ten minutes. The guy must have dropped what he was doing and went out and looked through the inventory until he found a tractor like mine, opened it up, and figured out where to look.
Here's the thing:
The throttle friction happens through a wavy washer on the bottom side of the throttle crank. It's supposed to be held in place by two nuts with a flat on the bottom. The jam action of nut against nut is supposed to hold them in place. What was happening with my machine is that the nuts won't stay in place, but instead unwind themselves a little bit every time you move the lever. When that happens, NO friction on the throttle lever. Let go, it returns to idle.
I tried re-jamming the nuts together, but it's obvious that either the factory used the wrong type of nut for the bottom nut, or they just haven't had enough trouble with this scheme yet for an assembly-line fix. Or the guy doing the assembly ran out of the proper type of jam-nut, and just substituted what he had.
THE FIX:
Get a Nylock nut and replace the bottom nut with it. Now you can use the top nut to set the friction and the Nylock nut won't let it come unwound. Here's a photo of the fix:
The throttle shaft comes down from the control pedestal and the friction assembly is there to the right of the battery negative terminal. Before, the two nuts would just unwind themselves even though they were jammed together. You would open and close the throttle half a dozen times, and suddenly you'd have no friction.
This is literally a 50-cent fix. (Well, my hardware store charged 43 cents). But you might want to take a minute if you have this type of throttle and check it. It's easy to get to, and only takes seconds to check.
I didn't give the size of the thread in case yours is different from mine. I just took the offending bottom nut to the hardware store and matched it up to a Nylock.
Well, it was (sorta) fun fiddling with the 2370. Meanwhile I hope this helps somebody else.
The drive back to the barn was ...interesting... trying to hold the throttle open with one hand, and steer with the other. Hit a bump, VROOM....
Now the dealer has been absolutely sterling. I'd recommend these guys anytime. I called the next morning, and managed to stump them with this one. But the guy says, "I'm going to go out in the lot, take a look, and call you back. I'll talk you through where to find it."
He called back in ten minutes. The guy must have dropped what he was doing and went out and looked through the inventory until he found a tractor like mine, opened it up, and figured out where to look.
Here's the thing:
The throttle friction happens through a wavy washer on the bottom side of the throttle crank. It's supposed to be held in place by two nuts with a flat on the bottom. The jam action of nut against nut is supposed to hold them in place. What was happening with my machine is that the nuts won't stay in place, but instead unwind themselves a little bit every time you move the lever. When that happens, NO friction on the throttle lever. Let go, it returns to idle.
I tried re-jamming the nuts together, but it's obvious that either the factory used the wrong type of nut for the bottom nut, or they just haven't had enough trouble with this scheme yet for an assembly-line fix. Or the guy doing the assembly ran out of the proper type of jam-nut, and just substituted what he had.
THE FIX:
Get a Nylock nut and replace the bottom nut with it. Now you can use the top nut to set the friction and the Nylock nut won't let it come unwound. Here's a photo of the fix:
The throttle shaft comes down from the control pedestal and the friction assembly is there to the right of the battery negative terminal. Before, the two nuts would just unwind themselves even though they were jammed together. You would open and close the throttle half a dozen times, and suddenly you'd have no friction.
This is literally a 50-cent fix. (Well, my hardware store charged 43 cents). But you might want to take a minute if you have this type of throttle and check it. It's easy to get to, and only takes seconds to check.
I didn't give the size of the thread in case yours is different from mine. I just took the offending bottom nut to the hardware store and matched it up to a Nylock.
Well, it was (sorta) fun fiddling with the 2370. Meanwhile I hope this helps somebody else.
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