Cousin (he with the mini) asked if I could help him sort out a problem with his zero turn mower drive as he is currently carrying an injury. No worries. Turned up, small problem; he was going to lift the arse of the zero turn onto some jack stands with the tractor bucket but the 4in1 is yawning open and cannot close. So first to the tractor. Loader is plumbed and wired the same as mine. No clicky clicky at the solenoid end. Pulled the plug on the solenoid and one terminal (earth) looks crusty. Quick clean and no fix. Then grabbed cousin's multimeter and couldn't find power or continuity anywhere. Ahha, wiring problem somewhere. Worked back to the switch and still nothing. No power, no earth. Tested the multimeter on the battery, hmmmm battery is reading 230mV. AC. Meter is farked. Back to step one. Trace as much of the wiring as possible and it power feed disappears under the dash never to be seen again but the inline fuse is accessible. Join 5 short pieces of scrap trailer wire together and patch from battery direct to fuse block. Now we get clicky clicky. Fire up the tractor and the bucket works as planned. Nothing for it, need a dashectomy to find what is going on. Probably a 5 minute job in reality.
Found this shit.
Useless lazy fucking dealer used a scotch lock to tap into the harness. Wedged the spade terminal into the scotch lock and taped the whole lot together. Tape failed and the spade fell out of its hidey hole. Bastards. I wasted an hour on this. Knife plus some sidecutters and a soldering iron and some solder and tape and it works now.
And the zero turn had eaten the drive belt and somehow wedged it between one drive unit pulley and the hydraulic motor cover. Many many fancy words and a tyre lever, big mother screwdriver and podgy bar and it was encouraged to return to its home.
Bastards.