Z125S starting issues

[Flying Biker]

I did a search and came up empty handed so I figured I would start a new thread for my no start Z125S zero turn. It was that time of year to bring it out of hibernation and I did my normal preflight checks and everything looked and spec'ed out good. Went to turn the key and nothing but clicks from the solenoid. Okay, lets take another good look at the battery and see what voltage it has and it looked good. I even put a jump pack on it "just in case" and still nothing. I checked "status" of each safety switches starting with the seat. While exercising each switch one by one, I would turn the key to see if there was a change in "clicking" and I got what I was expecting. I could definately tell that the switches were having an effect on the safety system. I even checked not only the 5 am "starter" fuse, but I decided to ohm out all fuses including the 30 amp main fuse. I then went ahead and jumped the solenoid and she roared to life. I ran her for about 30 minutes doing a quick mow job and brought her back to her paddock. I shut her down and again attempted to restart her. Nothing but clicks. I looked on the internet and my kubota app for a wiring diagram but that system seems to be kept in a locked vault somewhere. I need to see if I missed anything and or to see what kind of voltage/amps I would expect to see on the poles of the switches to make sure I don't have something with a little more resistance than it should or some other electron anomally. At one point during my quest of trying to spec things out, I came across 2 relays that were tucked up under the seat and hidden. I am trying to figure out what I am missing? I did switch out the solenoid for a brand new one and last year I changed out the brake safety switch, and maybe 2 years ago I had to change out the ignition switch.

Any words from the brain trust on what I need to look at/for?

 

[Russell King]

Since the starter and solenoid and battery all seem fine I would suggest that you could just ad a relay that gets “fired off” by the existing wiring through the safety switches. As you do, I suspect that one or more of the safety switches is dropping too much voltage to reliably fire the solenoid off.

See this diagram

Of course you can try to search out and repair or replace the safety switches but this would get you going in the meantime. The wire to the solenoid may be coming from some relay or computer already that won’t fire the solenoid until every separate safety switch reports the correct signal. Without the wiring diagram you just don’t know until you trace out the wires.

 

[Flying Biker]

Since the starter and solenoid and battery all seem fine I would suggest that you could just ad a relay that gets “fired off” by the existing wiring through the safety switches. As you do, I suspect that one or more of the safety switches is dropping too much voltage to reliably fire the solenoid off.

See this diagram
View attachment 173288

First off, thanks for the quick reply. This is very doable and I have a few relays already on hand. But my solenoid actually has 2 spade terminals on it. I will have to wait till tomorrow to trace where these two separate wires go so that I would know which spade terminal I would need to take post 30 to. I am assuming I could disconnect the key switch wire that goes to the solenoid, place it on post 85, then route Post 30 to that same post (assuming that the other spade post is the ground). Does that seem right?