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As I mentioned a few days back, the starter motor on the tractor has been playing up. With hindsight I suspect it has actually been close to failing for some time. Anyhow, I had a hunt online for possible replacements and found one on Ebay for less than £100. Quite possibly I could have had the existing one rebuild (or potentially even done it myself), but it didn’t seem likely to be any cheaper an option, particularly as the tractor sees a fair bit of use at this time of year.

Fortunately, having removed the side panel, the starter is pretty easy to get to.

Disconnect the positive terminal of the battery, unplug/unbolt the two wires on the motor and then it’s just two nuts that need removing, though one of those is a little awkward to get at. I used a ?” socket with an extension that was long enough to clear the motor body. That done, the starter just pulls off.

I removed the replacement from its packaging and had a slight worry. They’re quite different sizes and I don’t think the bendix gears even had the same numbers of teeth.

Following the advice of The Beautiful South I opted to carry on regardless and in proper Haynes manual fashion, reassembly was the reverse of disassembly.

I was half-expecting that the motor would just spin on its own and fail to engage with the ring gear on the flywheel, but as it happened the engine fired up first turn of the key, more easily than it has done for ages.

Now back to the mowing…

The coolant system on my compact tractor has been leaking for some time and whilst I had identified the problem as being a failed lower radiator hose and eventually bought a replacement, I still hadn’t got around to actually replacing it. These weekend I decided it needed doing.

First step was to remove the bodywork from the left hand side of the engine (looking from the driver’s seat).

The hose goes through the gap in the middle of the fan belt which also drives the alternator and access is much easier if the alternator is removed first, so I did that.

It turned out that the fan belt was a bit of a mess itself.

I noticed a cut-out in the bottom of the fan shroud that I think might be intended to make removal of the belt easier.

There was very little adjustment to slacken off the belt and I came to the conclusion that the correct replacement would be an A-32 v-belt, but an A-31 belt appeared to have been fitted. I ordered an A-32 as a replacement anyhow.

Once removed, the problem with the hose was immediately apparent.

This is clearly due to the belt rubbing on the hose, probably as a result of being too small. As luck would have it there was a spare A-33 belt lying about in the workshop so I tried that out of interest. It actually came far too close to what I believe to be the connector for the coolant temperature sensor, suggesting that A-32 is almost certainly the correct size.

Fortunately the replacement belt arrived the next day and only took a few minutes to fit.

Unfortunately it would appear that despite being correctly tensioned, the new belt has increased the load required to turn the engine over to start and the starter motor often won’t work. I can hear the solenoid driving the bendix gear, but the motor often won’t turn, or turns very sluggishly so happy happy joy joy, I now have another problem to resolve.