invertedintegra

i recently acquired a new project ride.
it's a john deere 108 riding mower.
it's been sitting for a while, so i pulled the carb off and the bowl is spotless. i drained the gas today and got a battery from a friend. now i stick my handy screwdriver in the ignition and i get nothing. i pulled the starter solenoid off and cleaned all the contacts. i had to replace one that fell off when i was disassembling it. and still nothing.
can anyone tell me if there is a way to check the solenoid with a multimeter? should i just replace it?
thanks in advance
-mike


footnotes:
tractor's broke but she still thinks it's sexy

invertedintegra

just took my high tech harbor freight multi to the battery

i think i have 6 volts and 0 amps... if that's possible

i'm gonna try to jump it with my car tommorrow

Fabrik8

You may have 6 volts, but you don't have zero amps. You just haven't learned how to use the multimeter yet. Don't take a current measurement on the battery, you will blow the internal fuse in the multimeter instantly, and multimeter fuses are often strange types and hard to find.

You can test the solenoid, yes. The solenoid coil should have a pretty low resistance (it's just a long coil of wire). You should be able to hear the solenoid contacts click shut when the ignition is turned on, even if the starter is not hooked up.

There will be coil contacts, and main contacts. You should have power at the main input contact, and the main output contact will obviously have power when the solenoid is activated only. The coil is also simple to test, but it could be one of two possible configurations. If they are switching ground, one coil terminal will have power all the time. If they are switching power, one terminal will be connected to ground all the time and the other terminal will have power when active.