"geezer" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 12 Jun 2005 17:53:23 -0700, "Pagan"
wrote:



So, check for shorts, check the battery fluids, and if none of this stuff
works, you'll probably have to take your mower in to have it checked out,
or
do a makeshift dangling wires job so you can 'jump' your mower.


I cut my lawn this PM. Before I started, the voltage across the
battery poles read some 10V.

When I finished it was the same. I disconnected the one battery lead
and did as discussed earlier and surprisingly discovered that my drain
is now 7V! No wonder the battery goes dead on me.

I have left the battery disconnected.

That's strange. With the ignition disconnected, you certainly should be
getting zero volts. Sounds like there's a short either in the main cables
or in your starter.

I don't know the specific setup with your mower, but with automotive
engines, the positive leads of the battery are connected to both the starter
and the ignition. The starter has a big, beefy wire going to it, while the
ignition has the scrawny one. When you start your car, the ignition switch
sends current to the solenoid on the starter, which allows current to go
through the beefy wire directly into the motor.

If your mower does the same, there could be a problem with your starter
and/or solenoid. On a real old motor, there could be years of dirt, dust,
grass, goop and crud jiggling around in there, which may explain the
different readings.

Really the only way to know for sure is to follow the battery cables through
the mower, disconnecting wires and gadgets until you find what's sucking the
life out of your battery. Instead of jumping to a likely culprit, it's best
to follow the cables, starting from the disconnected battery terminal and
moving towards (electrically speaking) the terminal connected to the
battery.

Keep in mind that while it's rare to have more than one short in a case like
this, it's not impossible. If you come across any significant voltage
drops, but still haven't reached zero, you might as well keep going, since
your already in there.

If you can't seem to find the problem, ask a friend or a shop to look into
it. I've found that I'll sometimes miss a problem, especially when it's
sitting right there in front of my face, while I'm off looking for
relatively exotic things. Then I get mad at myself, call myself names, hurt
my feelings, and quit talking to myself until I'm forgiven, which takes
forever, since it feels sometimes I can read my mind.

If the warranty on the battery is still good, you might want to try getting
it replaced. I'm pretty sure it's a goner. An overnight charging,
especially with your brutish charger, should easily yield a good 12 volts.
Most likely one of the cells in the battery got a kick of reversed charge
when your battery was close to drained, ruining that cell. The fact that
it's over 10 volts means the remaining 5 cells are well overcharged. A good
trickle charger is looking even better right now. You'd get the same
results with an overnight charge, without the overcharging.

Pagan