If you’re at all interested in rebuilding or flipping riding lawn mowers, it’s vital that you know how to start a riding lawn mower without a battery. Most of the machines I find either don’t have a battery or they aren’t any good. Before spending the money on a new battery, it’s good to be able to test the machine out. Let’s find out how to start a riding lawn mower without a battery.
Most of the machines I buy to flip are abused and neglected (i.e. cheap). That’s really the only way to consistently profit in this business. If a machine has been pampered and stored inside all of its life, the seller is most likely going to be asking actual value for it. There’s no room for you to profit on top of that.
However, if we start looking for the eyesores, the decrepit lawn art, and the old machines buried in the back forty – that’s where we can make some profit.
Understandably, these machines will take more work to get running. But it’s worth it when you can get a 500-1000% ROI.
That being said, plan on not having a battery. Even if the machine has one, it’s likely to be no good. If the machine has been sitting outside, years of freezing and thawing can quickly ruin a battery.
Tools Needed (Commissions Earned)
Unless you plan on keeping a spare battery just for testing, the most economical option that I’ve found is to ALWAYS carry a charged portable jumper pack with me.
The benefit of having a jumper pack vs a spare battery is that you can buy some jumper packs that have an on-board air compressor. Since the machines we’re getting probably have flat tires as well, it’s handy to be able to inflate those tires before trying to move or load a machine. They roll a lot better when the tires are inflated.
How to Start a Riding Lawn Mower Without a Battery
So now that you’ve got your jumper pack, you can directly connect the pack to the battery leads on the machine. If there is a dead battery, you should go ahead and remove it for safety purposes. Since there’s no battery in the machine any longer, you can directly attach the jumper pack to both leads – positive to positive and negative to negative.
The jumper pack functions exactly as the battery does. It supplies power to the starter motor once given the signal from the ignition switch. Now that we’ve got it hooked up, go ahead and crank the ignition switch.
Chances are that the machine won’t start if it needs a little more help, but at least now you know how to start a riding lawn mower without a battery!
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