Friday, June 1, 2012

Out With the Old, In With the New

I felt like a kid in a candy store today.  I replaced my 15 year old Murray mower with a John Deere D130 mower with a 20hp V-twin engine.  After mowing I felt like I had moved from an economy car up to a luxury sedan.  The first thing I did was to disable the seat safety cut-off switch which cuts off the mower if you get up off the seat.  I then disabled the RIO switch which requires you to step on the brake and push a button before you can mow in reverse.  For web searchers on the subject just check out the pictures below (I don't recommend you do this for safety reasons, I'm just documenting what I did).  To disable the seat switch which is on the bottom of the seat I just cut the three wires leading to the plug.  You can't use jumpers to do the trick, just cut all three wires and it's good to go.  As for the RIO switch I just lifted up the engine cover, reached underneath and pushed the RIO switch out of the dash before making a small wire jumper to permanently connect the two pins at the switch.  After that I just popped the switch back into the dash.  After this I removed all the stupid safety warning stickers placed all over the mower such as the one on the blade deck which stated 'Warning, do not place hands under the deck while the blade is engaged or severe injury will result'.  Oh really?  I didn't realize that!!!  Fear of liability and warning crap all over everything drives me absolutely crazy.  I guess we are just a country of morons that don't have any common sense.  Anybody that reaches under a mower deck with the blades engaged deserves to loose their fingers.





5 comments:

  1. How do you bypass the seat?

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    Replies
    1. walk along side the mower and keep on going

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  2. Excellent help - much appreciated. Tried to bypass the seat safety crap today to no avail. Will try cutting the wires.

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  3. Why do you need to cut the wires? Wouldn't unplugging the harness do the same thing? Just curious so I don't cut if I don't need to.

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  4. another option is to slide the switch out and with the plug still connected zip tie the button so that the safety switch is always depressed.

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