I got p***ed of today!

I have a garden tractor set up for solely plowing the crap that Shameless sends  us.  I bought it about 4 years ago, and have issues with it starting and running, all with the electrical in it.  The older guy that had it before me did some home brew wiring! Sometimes it runs fine, then it will not. 

I've done that on several big and garden tractors,last one was the 185 diesel replaced about 1 mile of wire with about 6 ft of wire.

I'm really happy for you ! I know what a PITA 'electrical' can be and I design microcomputer based stuff....

What gets me is the BS 'they' go through to first keep you from cutting grass going backwards and NOW 'they' bodge that to ALLOW you to cut grass going backwards !!
 You gotta wonder WHY we 'need' a $90 ign switch on a used $500 rider...
idiots...

The 'reverse safety' switch... on many riding mowers... shuts off the electric PTO clutch... and for those that don't, it just kills the motor when you try to back up.

So if you have the former, you have a PTO clutch that burns out really, really early.
If you have the latter, you have either a worn out starter, or a ruined bendix, or an engine that backfires each time you realize you forgot and slapped it back into neutral... OR, you're wearing out the PTO clutch linkage by shifting the mechanical PTO off to back the hell up.

My Bobcat commercial ZTR only cares about wether you get out of the seat with the PTO clutch on, or brake released... or when you pull the levers to the DRIVE position with the parking brake set.  They're safety gadgets that actually make sense.

There's a point in 'safety features' where the design intention directly combats the operator's intended task.  In this case, there's times when you HAVE to mow backwards (like... keeping the chute in the proper direction, or when the area does not have sufficient room to turn around to mow forward).  There's also times when, amidst mowing, you need to back a short distance to recover a tight turn (unless you're in my ZTR).  Disengaging (either manually, or automatically) negates the machine's ability, and in frequent cases, results in rapid wear and tear.

Like vehicle doors that automatically lock every time you put the transmission in gear.  In a farm truck, the door locks wear out rapidly, and in the case of my '99 Chevy, wore so bad, that eventually the door would NOT unlock.  Trapped my wife inside... she crawed out the passenger window... you can imagine the profanity I got from that.

I was at a jobsite last month where a dozen earth moving, material handling, and other machines had 'back up safety alarms'.  The worksite was such a caucophony of back up alarms, that my rigger could not hear me make motion requests for a 130-ton crane.  The only solution, was to go to EVERY machine, EVERY superintendant, and EVERY contractor, and tell them to absolutely, positively stop EVERY MACHINE, so that we could give audible instructions for a very difficult crane lift.

There's a point when 'safety systems' become so detatched from reality, that they become THE PROBLEM, rather than a solution.

My dad loves his 'lane change warning' and 'adaptive cruise control'.  What will eventually happen, is that people will become so 'used' to these 'safety features', that they'll be comfortable texting while driving in commuter traffic in dense fog and frozen conditions.

The one safety feature that we must have, and the one that we should NEVER allow to be taken from the forefront, is the one between our ears.  With that, I propose that if the machines we use every day were much less equipped with 'safety crutches' for everything we might do 'wrong', that we'd be a S#it-ton more attentive to what we SHOULD be doing.

I agree with 'ya there, Jay-  I had a pickup truck, I installed ONE power window... on passenger side.  When I sold it, the guy buying wondered why... well, it had no air conditioning, and I couldn't reach the far winder, but I could hand-op the driver's side just fine...

Yes, there was some consternation about me stopping all the machines, but I had the largest machine, and the most critical operation in terms of human safety, so they were all understanding about it.  I only stopped them for about 45 seconds at a time, four times in fifteen minutes.  My crane operation is well-orchestrated, so it goes really fast, and frankly, everybody on the jobsite was glad to have the damned noise shut up for just a minute.

I should probably sue the CPSC and OSHA for the ringing in my ears... even with earplugs in, a day working around them alarms sends me to bed at night in pain.

The JD lawn tractor that I had  had a safety in reverse that would kill the engine if you tried to reverse when the mower deck was on. They have a button on the dash that you could push when you started to reverse and it would bypass the safety to allow you to mow in reverse.

Wasn't there a post recently where someone died because they started the tractor from the side and got run over and died because it was in gear? Wonder if a safety switch would of eliminated that incident....

does that mean you want more of that stuff now Dave?