Cub Cadet 107 electrical fire
 

I've recently restored my dad's 107 and have been working on the PTO. The hood and grill were off for better access. I took the v. regulator and bracket off to separate it from the grill. I needed to use the 107 to pull a small trailer, so I attached the v. regulator to the frame just to run it for a few minutes. After a couple minutes with it running, I could tell it wasn't running right and then heavy smoke followed by the v. reg. catching on fire. I cut the key off and tried to put the v.r. out by slapping a rag at it, then it melted off from the attachment side of the v.r. opposite the one that has the ground wire connected to it. It was only mounted using one of the two bracket holes.

After everything cooled down I'm left with all the insulation burned from the wire that goes to the v.r. gauge and the other wires had melted insulation where they touched the wire that shorted, I intend to replace the wires(again). It had something to do with moving the v.r. but I checked to see if anything was touching and moved it up and down and it appeared to be ok, before starting mower. I still dont know what went wrong.

My question is can the vr be tested and whats the chances of it surviving that? The vr looks fine on the inside, if its ok, I have an old one the I can swap the part that burned off. The pics show where it was temporarily mounted to the frame. Any ideas what went wrong? Thanks Attachment 100656

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First, welcome to OCC............. :Welcome2:

I can't say what caused this, it could be a number of reasons. After all, the 107 is about 50 yrs old.

Judging the V/R based outward appearance, is not wise.

I would suggest that a new and correct Wiring Harness and V/R be obtained. This way, you know the parts are new, and function properly.

:ThumbsUp:

X2 AND make sure you observe the terminal MARKINGS on the new regulator, if you go that route as some replacements have the terminals in different physical locations.
Match the terminal markings to the correct wires following the wiring diagram.
or you will have more "magic" smoke escaping, which is not good as you have learned.

:biggrin2:

Thanks for the welcome, R Bedell and thanks ol'george for the info.

Lucky you were able to put it out quick and avoid any personal injury and only minor damage. Now how 'bout you start a resto thread and show us what you did to your dad's cub? :beerchug:

I was very lucky, If it had a gas leak or had had an oil build up on the engine, I'm thinking it would have burned up.

Here's a few pics of the restore
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