Hi there folks i have a eager 1 , 6.75 hp craftsman. On one the treads on the google search it was posted that while sears does not make parts for the eager1 you can still get them. The question is where? How do I order them. The parts diagram on line at the sears part website just shows the engine as one piece. I pulled the mower out of my friends garbage because I am bored and needed something to play with. I have tools a work area and a credit card. What more does a guy need. I also need the name of the motor I think it is a Treusch? or some such thinf . If i can get all the dirt off of it its probily on it some where. Time like this I miss the Armys TMs and Parts Manuals . Any help will be useful and appreciated Larry Salerno ( retired US Army tanker)

"I just replaced Starter Pinion Gear, on my Murry 14.5 HP riding mower, when replacing the starter, bolts will not pull starter tight against motor, the bolts are bottoming out. Is this normal? Do I need to add extra washers? There is about 1/8 inch of play" NO, this is not normal and probably means that you are running on the very tips of the starter gear teeth. Not good. I do not see any logical reason for this. Would have been nice to know WHAT 14.5 engine we are talking about thought before I stuck my neck out, make, model number. Walt Conner

"might be a stupid ? but, here goes. did you hook the battery up backwards? the starter will turn both ways. " My thought exactly. "Well looks like the one they gave me has the post positioned differently for positive and negative and they are reversed. Can't believe I never caught that." Don't know about Kohler but if you do a B&S that way, it will either blow a fuse (if there is one) OR burn out the diode in the charging system. I had a guy buy an engine from me years ago and come back all worked up because charging system would not work. Turned out he had done exactly what you did, bought a new batter and "put it in just like the old one" problem was poles were reversed. I guess he thought he would put one over on me as his starter would not have worked either and he must have seen the problem. Walt Conner

I didn't have to replace the starter. For some reason I had thought the "Bendix spring" was within the starter case. The link provided by bill_kapaun cleared that up...thanks :-) Although my Craftsman manual has the same drawings, those look like they were copied on a 30 year-old Xerox. The original Briggs drawings are much clearer. Once I realized the spring was outside of the starter, I took another look and found a lot of grass and twigs between the plastic cowling and starter. It was clogging the Bendix so badly that it couldn't push the starter gear up into the flywheel. I cleared it by wedging needle-nose pliers and a thin metal ruler in the gap. After five minutes of this, the engine cranked just fine. ...and cranked...and cranked... It woudn't start! The smell of gasoline in my shed told me it wasn't a fuel-delivery problem. Compression sounds from the exhaust told me that the engine was probably OK. That left spark. Pulled the spark-plug wire out and stuck a long screwdriver in the end. Touched that to a metal part on the mower while cranking and saw no spark. Followed the wire to under the engine cowling and found more grass and twigs. There was so much of it that the ignition coil and much of the spark plug wire was buried. Even so, all of that junk shouldn't kill the spark unless they were compromised in some way. So I wound up removing the plastic cowling after all. Why on Earth does Briggs use Torx bolts in front and hex bolts in the back? I didn't have a large enough Torx bit, so I loosened the front bolts with Channel-Lock pliers. The top of the engine was COVERED with grass, leaves, and twigs. It was packed tightly into the cooling fins. I smelled a rat...or more precisely, a MOUSE. Sure enough, I found what was left of the spark-plug wire encased in nesting material. The little bahstud had gnawed the insulator all the way down to the conductor. I guess mice don't like copper cuz that's where it stopped. The damp plant material was shorting the ignition to ground. A spark does little good OUTSIDE of the motor. I could see that Briggs saved money on the ignition system. The ignition module, coil, and spark-plug wire are integrated. To replace the wire I would have to buy the entire module. Instead I repaired it by splitting a piece of old fuel hose down the middle and covering the length of bare wire with it. My dad had bought the hose 15 years ago when car engines were still carbeureted. While it was useless on today's fuel-injected cars, it did just fine as an insulator. I cleaned out the cooling fins with a thin screwdriver. I scraped off more junk around the starter gear for good measure. Little mousey was busy making a home out of my LT3000 yet never paid me a dime in rent. After repairs, the mower started on the first crank. I put it to work over the weekend. The motor ran as well as when I first bought the Craftsman two seasons ago. Not bad for a 1000-dollar lawn tractor. With luck, I'll be saying that ten seasons from now. Thanks for the help and advice! Peace. Marco