Could it be as simple as a blown fuse (30 Amp) in the charging circuit.
Sometimes there is an 'in-line' fuse holder in the positive lead wire
(smaller guage of two wires to battery +ve terminal. Other than that it
might be a burnt out rectifier. You may want to simply get the manual for
the engine at this point to locate the rectifier.

Don.

"Tomes" wrote in message
...
Just bumping this up again as I still have this issue with no response as
of
yet. Thanks folks.

Tomes wrote in message
...
: Hi folks,
: How do I buy a service manual for my John Deere GT262 lawn tractor,
about
5
: years old? I cannot seem to find one on the net.
:
: My problem is as follows:
: As I was using it to pull stuff around, the battery light came on. I
was
: far from the house so I needed to keep on going, so I did. Made it back
to
: the house OK, checked the battery and it looked OK as far as I could
tell
: (in my limited wisdom...). I wiggled the connections around a bit and
: retightened (it was tight but had a little bit [not much] of buildup on
the
: positive
: side) in an effort to make a better contact and looked into the cells,
which
: seemed to have enough water because I could not see the plates, just
liquid.
: I started it up again and it died dead in about 10 seconds and then
would
: not crank. Battery dead. The unit is about 5 years old and is used in
the
: winter too; it lives in the shed outdoors. I replaced the battery
($15),
: and the same thing happened after just a bit of mowing [sooner than I
: expected]. So I believe that I need to troubleshoot and replace
something
: inside the engine as it is not charging up, just sucking the power dry.
I
: don't know what to do on my own, so I suppose I need the shop manual to
: guide me through (unless someone wishes to walk me through this - I am
OK
: with a wrench but have never taken apart this type of engine). I have a
: multimeter. If more details will help I will gladly provide.
:
: Thanks very much,
: Tomes
:
:
: