So I was mowing my yard yesterday. I hadn't even been going for 2 minutes when I heard a big metallic clunk, and the mower died immediately. Upon further investigation, I discovered that I ran over a tomato cage that was hidden in the tall grass.
After removing what was left of the tomato cage, I went to start it up and it wouldn't fire up. I waited 5 minutes, primed the carb and tried again. After pulling the pull start madly for a minute or so still nothing. I removed the plug, checked for spark, sprayed some started fluid up in there. Still no go.
So I went off to the internets to research this and came across a trouble shooting guide for that said basically when you go from high RPMs to 0 RPMS really fast it is bad for the mower. Either the crank to blade adapter key sheared or the flywheel key sheared.
I looked at the blade first, there was no extra play in the blade to the crank so I knew that was good. I tried to look at the flywheel but it was under a cover and a pull starter. I removed them and got to the flywheel. I couldn't tell without taking the flywheel off. I ended up using a E-50 clutch puller to pull the flywheel. Good news the key was good!
Not knowing where to go from here I reassembled everything and gave her a tug on the ol pull start and she started right up!
I doubt taking the flywheel off then on again fixed anything. So what fixed it? Was the engine just flooded? (edited)
