Lights!

Our beloved zero-turn may not be charging the battery.
It uses a battery to crank its starter-motor; starts like a car.
A while ago it wouldn’t crank, which to me means dead battery. —We had to push it into our shed.
I have a small trickle-charger to charge various batteries, e.g. my motorcycle.
So I hooked it up to the zero-turn’s battery, and plugged the charger into my 100-foot extension-cord, which I plugged into an outside outlet.
I let it charge all night, so viola; the mower cranked the next day like normal.
So every day after each mow I hooked up the trickle-charger, and let it charge all night.
The trickle-charger has two tiny diode lights: one red and one green.
At full charging it’s solid red. Fully charged is green. Almost charged is red with winking green.
After mowing it would be solid red for a long time, which tells me it may have been running on the battery.
I picked the brain of good old Dan at Leif’s, where I bought it.
“I ain’t sure it’s charging, so where’s the charger on it?”
“Two magnets are in the flywheel,” he said; “that rotate past a pickup.
They’re very hard to get at. Ya need a puller, and are taking things all apart.
In my experience, it’s your voltage-regulator, a sealed transistorized unit. It looks like this.”
He showed me a Briggs & Stratton voltage-regulator. “These two yellow wires come from the pickup, and the single red wire goes to your starter solenoid.”
Okay, I have a tester, but I last used it about 25-30 years ago.
It can measure amperage to the battery when wired in.
It can also measure voltage, but that doesn’t matter as much as amperage to the battery.
Don’t know if I’ll ever get around to using it — not enough time.
Meanwhile, I keep charging the battery after each mow with the trickle-charger — it always showed solid red for a while.
The other night, I hooked everything up, and no lights at the trickle-charger.
Now what?
Is this thing charging?
I dork around, resetting the ground-fault-interrupter that I think may control the outside plug receptacle.
No lights.
I disconnect everything and take the trickle-charger inside to try it on the battery of the Greenie, which is still disconnected inside.
Lights!
Charger works, I guess.
Don’t know about the outside receptacle.
Next day, I take a table-lamp I use as my test lamp from our bedroom.
Plug table-lamp into outside receptacle. —Works.
Plug extension-cord into outside receptacle, and then lamp into extension-cord.
Doesn’t work.
Looks like the extension-cord failed.
I should mention that in the middle of all this my test bulb also went south.
Back to square one.
Replace wonky bulb with working bulb.
All this is developing into a visit to the hardware in Honeoye Falls.
I could fix the extension-cord, but I’ve always wanted to replace it. It’s only two-strand — no ground wire — so needs an adapter-plug.
I tested the adapter too. That worked, so it’s the cord.
Looked like the plug had come apart, so I could probably fix it, if I -a) had the time, and -b) were so inclined.
Off to the hardware in Honeoye Falls — five minutes away, as opposed to 35 minutes to mighty Wal*Mart — all to purchase a new 100-foot extension-cord. —Other errands got attached; as always. The hardware is next to the MarketPlace supermarket.
Back home, plug trickle-charger into new extension-cord.
Lights!

Our “zero-turn” is our 48-inch Husqvarna riding-mower; “zero-turn” because it’s a special design with separate drives to each drive-wheel, so it can be spun on a dime. “Zero-turns” are becoming the norm, because they cut mowing time in half compared to a lawn-tractor, which has to be set up for each mowing-pass.

“Leif’s” is Leif’s Sales and Service, a small-engine repair and Husqvarna store nearby. (Dan is also a railfan; like me.)

“Briggs & Stratton” is the maker of the engine in my zero-turn, an 18-horsepower V-twin.

A “ground-fault-interrupter” cuts out the current to a circuit if the circuit grounds — e.g. attempts to electrocute the user. —It’s a protection mechanism, and all outside circuits have “ground-fault-interrupter” protection by code.

“The Greenie” is our previous mower, a small 38-inch cut riding mower. It’s John Deere, so is green. I still have it; and -a) use it to brush-hog paths, or -b) as backup.

“Honeoye (‘HONE-eee-oy’) Falls” is the nearest town to where we live in western New York, a rural town about five miles away.

RE: “Adapter-plug....” —Three terminal plug into two-terminal receptacle; the third wire is ground. Most extension-cords ya now see are three-wire; and the receptacles are also grounded, with the plug receptacles of different size to make the plug energize just so. The plug blades are of different shape, so one side won’t plug into the smaller receptacle.

“MarketPlace supermarket” is a small independent supermarket in Honeoye Falls we often buy groceries at.

My siblings all loudly declare Wal*Mart is the greatest store in the entire known universe, and the fact that I rarely shop there means I’m of-the-Devil.