How to test electric pto switches for mowers

you guys are gonna love this this is awesome hey guys Josh with metal in motion back at you with another video this one's gonna be super short straight to the point I just want to show you guys how to test these blade switches on your electric PTO riding mowers so stay tuned now you'll notice I've started grinding on this switch this switch is a is a little wore out I'm going to actually tear it apart and let you guys take a look on the inside but if you notice on the side of the switch on one side there's the letters in C that stands for normally closed so when this switch is in the off position there is normally closed contacts between this bottom pin there's a whole bottom row and this top another individual so this one is individually connected to this one this one is individually connected to this one of course there's no pin here so this is not even being used when it's the switch is off however when you pull it now it's in the on position now what you're going to get is instead of the top in the bottom being connected you're gonna get the middle and the bottom being connected the middle in the bottom being connected and the middle and the bottom being connected and we're gonna test this with the multimeter just to show you guys what we're talking about so I've got my multimeter set on the noise when you touch the two leads together I get the beeping and we'll see here in the normally off position we're gonna go from the bottom get you in the camera here I'm gonna go from the bottom to the top we have beeping we're gonna go from the bottom to the top we have beeping of course this one is not being utilized so now it's we're gonna open the switch if we go from the bottom just like we just did to the top nothing but if we go to the middle now we have contact same thing on this one if we go from the bottom we're gonna check the top which was normally closed now this is normally open it's not normally open now it is open so now we're gonna check the middle and we have contacts so technically this switch is working fine right now but I can wiggle this around and kind of move it and I lose contact between some of these some of these rows so now when it's in the on position this little one on the end here is actually used so that is how you test it with a multimeter let's tear this thing open and see what it looks like inside you guys are gonna love this this is awesome so we've ground the sides out so we can see the switch working now in the normally closed position that's normally off you'll notice that we've got these long pieces of metal in the back okay there's a little button in behind each one of these pieces of metal that's when you in the closed position that little piece of metal is sitting kind of down here at the bottom and when I open it that little piece of metal it's a little button goes from the bottom and it slides over the top so it always has contact on the backside so all the these three here in this row are always going to have contact not with each other but with the other rows now all the switching takes place on this side okay so you'll notice we've got these little L pieces in here one and two that's these top two pins that's these outside pins okay now if we also have these three big pieces of steel here those are the center tabs now if I close this really carefully there we go you see those three round circles that is the little metal buttons that I'm talking about those are the contact points so on this side they're always connected so in this case they're connected to these outside pins and when I flip it over and close the switch now those little contacts are touching these L pieces which is going to give me continuity between these two outside ones in the bottom row when I open it the contact moves from those little L brackets up to these three flat spades which is all the Centers so now I have continuity from the back row which it's always connected to to now the middle row and that's all there is to these switches and just like any switch these little buttons and stuff we're going to get corrosion on them they'll probably get burned over time you know just get bad connections this is all plastic so this stuff is gonna wear out with you know opening and closing and opening closing us all the time so you're gonna get slop in it and so if it was me I would close it check for continuity you know wiggle it around a little bit just seek how how sloppy it is if it affects my continuity and then same thing open it up and kind of wiggle it and move it around and just push it in and out just a touch and see how your connection is I mean you want a good connection all the time you don't want it to be cut now so yeah these things are you know such cheaply made I don't think they're they're actually super cheap I think the switch is like 15 to 25 dollars I could be wrong so they're not the cheapest switch but just like any other switch they're just made out of plastic so they're gonna wear out so pitch this thing in the trash get another one and move on so hope you enjoyed that little video on us dissecting a blade pto switch there are three different versions of these switches there's one with the yellow knob like this one there's a black knob and there's a red knob don't quote me on this I got to check it but if I remember right they all test very similar to this one and they will have the inci stamped on the side letting you know that when the switch is off they are in the normally closed position and normally it's the outside tabs that are in the normally closed position I'm Josh with meddle in motion good luck on your repairs we'll catch you next time [Music]

Channel: Metal In Motion Shop

Views: 323,851

Keywords: riding mower, zero turn, electrical switch, pto switch, test, How to

Id: RLavJ6QeJQw

Length: 5min 58sec (358 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 10 2018