On Oct 17, 6:34 am, DerbyDad03 wrote:
On 17 Sep, 21:26, "Bob F" wrote:





"DerbyDad03" wrote in message

ups.com...

On Sep 15, 6:10 pm, Oren wrote:
On Sat, 15 Sep 2007 15:34:19 -0400, Meat Plow
wrote:

The key ensures the
proper position of the flywheel so there is no guesswork.

They can be a booger now and then; when placing the FW on. The key
might slip a tad. I use a tiny bit a grease to help hold the key in
the crank slot - if I ever have to do it again.

--
Oren

"Well, it doesn't happen all the time, but when it happens, it happens
constantly."

Assuming the FW key is the problem, how bad is it for the mower to run
like this? It's September in Upstate NY, so I only have a few more
mows before I'd be putting it up for the winter anyway. I'd just as
soon wait until the season's over before my first foray into small
engine repair.

The next time you start it, the rope will break. Then you'll need to fix that
too.

It's not that big of a deal to fix. Get brave and give it a try.

http://repairfaq.ece.drexel.edu/sam/lmfaq.htm

Bob- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

A note of thanks to all who offered help...

So I finally decided to attack the mower last weekend - I mowed
Saturday morning and had no problems other than the hard starts and
knocking, same symptoms as before.

Later that day my son tried to start the mower and found that the
blade was extremely loose, which was not the case during earlier
inspections. He tightened the blade, tried to start it again and the
blade loosened up immediately. It turned out that in addition to the
starting problems, the welds on the driver-blade assembly had broken
free. This is the part that not only secures the blade to the shaft,
but also has the pully that powers the front-wheel drive.

Now I have to either fix or trash the mower. I pulled the engine cover
and shroud to find (as many you suggested) that the flywheel key was
broken and the flywheel had shifted significantly. Now I had to figure
out how to get the flywheel off. A quick Google search found this page
which shows a home made tool for pulling the flywheel on Tucumseh
engine:

http://repairfaq.ece.drexel.edu/sam/lmfaq.htm#lmflyrml

Coincidentally, that's located at the same repair site that Bob
suggested.

Anyway, 15 minutes later I had the flywheel off and was on my way to
the mower repair shop. $70 dollars later I had a flywheel key, a
driver-blade assembly, a drive belt and a new mulching blade. Since
the mower absolutely needed a blade anyway, I figure the repair cost
was really only $50.

The mower now starts with no more than 2 pulls when cold, half a pull
when warm.

Thanks again!- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Thanks for the update.

Harry K