How do I manually disengage the PTO on a John Deere 111 lawn tractor?

[Superroop]

Hi all. I have a 80's something John Deere 111 lawn tractor with electric PTO and I was cutting my lawn today when I ran over a pile of small brush (from thinning out rose bushes last week). As I ran into the pile thinking I could mulch that stuff, it bogged the engine down until it eventually died. I wasn't fast enough to back out of it or disengage the PTO while it was running. SO now the mower won't restart and I'm assuming it has something to do with the PTO being engaged. Is there a way to disengage it manually? How do I go about doing that? Also, when I crank it, it sounds like someone starting a car that is missing a few teeth on the starter, so I stopped trying to start it for fear that I'll wreck it. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks

 

[reynoldston]

Your PTO engages with positive electric when you turn the PTO switch on and when you turn your PTO switch to off it will remove the positive electric and your clutch will disengage. If not you have other problems.

 

[Superroop]

Ugh. Not what I wanted to hear. May be time to retire the ol' girl.
I tried disconnecting the PTO switch and it wouldn't even crank. I looked underneath for debris and nothing. I'm going to let it sit a day before I pull the trigger on a new mower.
Thanks for your answer. Definitely makes sense. My brother wondered if maybe the switch hasn't gone bad. Which I guess is a possibility if the ignition is complicated enough to know that I have it unplugged and it won't turn over, then perhaps there is somehting in there that would prevent it from starting if the switch was bad.

 

[reynoldston]

As I recall it isn't that bad of a job to remove the mower deck belt on the John Deere 111. This will isolate the mower deck and engine. Then you can go from there.

 

[Rivets]

If you remove the deck and jack up the front end, you might find debris wedged in the clutch. Clutches are not that hard to remove and put back on. You might try to take it off and if you don't know how to test it, take it to a small engine shop and ask them to test it. Most shops would do that for free.

 

[Superroop]

As I originally suspected, it was the starter itself. I described the sound it made as one similar to a car missing teeth on the starter. I decided to start at the top and work my way down. I removed the little cover that covers the starter gear and lo and behold, it was indeed missing teeth. I went to local lawn mower shop and got a new one for $6. I was surprised that the gears seemed to made of some type of plastic. It certainly wasn't steel. Either way, I decided now was as good a time as any to get out from underneath the old girl and suspend my frugal ways. I went to same lawnmower shop and bought an X300 John Deere with bagger and sold the old 111 for $550. I figured it was best to sell the 111 while it was still worth something to somebody. I was more surprised that it lasted three days craigslist. I had this old 22" rider that I sold before I got the 111 and it was gone the same day. That thing was old school and then some.

Thanks for the all the advice, which basically led me away from suspecting it was the actual clutch or PTO. Made total sense after I thought about it.