Thank you Gary! Great insight here. Your suggestions are making me think about the massive electrical short I experienced the first time I mowed with this tractor. I was finishing the back lawn, driving up a relatively steep grade when BAM sparks flew everywhere and it died. I got it turned perpendicular to the hill and stopped, then saw the negative terminal had completely melted!
I realized the entire battery was loose in the engine bay (not strapped down) and slid backward toward the dash while I was driving up the hill. The positive terminal post/clamp touched something metal (I think part of steering tilt assembly) and created the short. I was able to refab the negative clamp and finish the mow, but I'm wondering now if that short could have messed up other parts of the electrical system, like this ignition/kill switch issue I might have? The tractor hasn't been the same since that short happened...
Jump the starter post directly with pos. from battery. Engine should crank AND run if it has good spark and fuel. It can't run long because of elec fuel pump not working.
So ... I disconnect the harness and then hook up a jumper wire on starter and touch other end to positive post on battery until it starts running. Seems easy enough! Does the gauge of jumper wire matter much? The jumpers I have are maybe ... 18 gauge I think? I also have regular jumper cables....
You also need a jumper wire from pos. to solenoid valve on carb or it won't run.....the real kicker is you can't shut it off but just unhook jumper to solenoid and it will stop or at idle full choke...
So what you're saying here is that if I want to get it to run w/o ignition switch I also need to jump the carb solenoid, and leave it connected as long as I want it to run? Then when I want to shut off engine, I disconnect the jumper? I'm assuming that w/o the electric fuel pump running, the engine will only run for a few moments anyway?
So if all this works, engine runs, you have a bad ignition switch or a shorted kill wire...The kill wire is plugged into the bottom of coil around flywheel...
Is part #19 in the image below the kill wire you are talking about?
Removing shroud gives access..Unhook kill,plug harness in and try it with switch .If it runs then your issue is probably the kill wire.Mice damage a lot of these.If it doesn't stay running then ignition switch is bad.Be sure to get the exact replacement.Mfg do a lot of different hook ups with swtiches so a 6 post doesn't neccessarily mean it's wired the same .Whew,did you get all that? Hope I didn't leave anything out....
Thanks again. Still trying to piece this all together!