kelley

I inherited (read someone dropped it off ) a john deer stx38 with a blowed up kohler in it .. well i have a 12 horse briggs that i can put in and it runs and mows nice well till the battery dies and quits feeding the clutch. how much changing of the wiring do i need to connect the briggs totally to the existing wiring or do I do it the easy way and just change the whole system to a new ignition switch. any help would be appreciated.

DEERE180

kelley -
It is possible tha your battery charging system is not quite up to snuff and/or your battery is weak. The wiring is most likely not the issue, as if it works until the battery juice goes away, then it indicates that the wiring is OK.

So get a VOM (volt Ohm meter) and read the voltage of the battery. It should be 12.0 volt or above.
A normally good battery (charged) should read about 12.5 Volts.

Then re-read the voltage AFTER the engine is running. There ought to be at least about 0.3 to 0.5 Volts higher reading on the battery voltage. Nominally about 12.5-13.0 or higher volts.

If not then the charging system may be at fault. If your battery -with engine of- is reading 11.5 or less it needs to be trashed.

I have JD180 that stopped energizing the cluthc -even though it could start and run the engine well!!!! I had to replace the battery and then the PTO / clutch worked just fine.