Yep you bent the crankshaft, likely you now have a pile of junk.
Oldtimers might know how to straighten it but since they no longer
harden the cranks it will bent very easy again.

Tom


On Sun, 23 Oct 2005 22:29:14 GMT, Charlie Brown
wrote:

I hit a stump with a Murray lawn mower today. Mower stopped dead and
when started back up, made a heck of a racket. Loud clanging sound.
I checked the blade, it looked fine so I decided to take the motor
apart and see if anything obvious appeared broken.

Engine head and piston appeared okay.

Took the bottom case off and no broken parts in there either. When I
took it off, the camshaft came off and I didn't know how to put it
back in with the correct timing. I tried to eyeball it as best I
could setting it up so that it appeared the valves opened and closed
when they should. However, once I got it back together and started it
up, it ran badly. Started smoking pretty bad after a few seconds and
after shutting off, blue smoke would sift out of the muffler.

Additionally, when starting, the pull cord jerked me back a few times.
Made me hit myself in the ribs once, knocked the wind out of me! Hope
the neighbors didn't see that one!

Anyway, I'm thinking the timing is off. How do I put that sucker back
together to ensure that it's right? Is it possible that when I hit
that stump that it through the gears jumped out of wack also messing
the timing up causing it to run like crap?