Sorry I haven't checked back in, things have been hyper busy. We ended up with 12 chicks: 2 Porcelain Belgian d'Uccles, 1 Black Mottled Belgian d'Uccle, 1 Black Silkie, 1 Cuckoo Silkie, 1 Blue Giant Cochin, 2 Lemon Blue Giant Cochins, 2 Golden Laced Giant Cochins and 2 Salmon Faverolles. As for my suppliers, I got all of my eggs of ebay this year. The breeders are extremely nice, down-to-earth folks who replied with friendly emails, bent over backwards to please and in most cases put in an extra egg or two. They also wrapped the eggs extremely well and marked the boxes as to the contents. I did continue to have a low hatch rate this year, even for shipped eggs. I incubated 25 eggs in each incubator, and had 5 hatch in one incubator, 7 in the other. At least hatching eggs by mail this time tells me that it isn't my flock that's to blame. I opened the unhatched eggs, and found eggs at all stages of development, literally from just-started to full-term chicks. They seemed to be spread out equally, too--I didn't see a higher percentage of chicks at certain stages. And both incubators reflected the same results. So I really don't know WHAT is going on with the incubators. One is 10+ years old, the other 2 years old and are identical. I am following instructions religiously, temp and humidity are maintained correctly. From now one I'm not going to incubate more than a dozen or so eggs at a time and see how that goes. The incubator thing is making me crazy. Anyone else who hatches eggs in an incubator--how many eggs do you set at once? Have you ever loaded your incubator to it's maximum number? Velvet ~:>

Thanks, I have taken the cowling (fan and flywheel cover) off and see the Ignition Unit is the whole ignition, except for the spark plugs and the magnet on the flywheel that swings past the Ignition Unit package with the laminated core for the rotating magnet to induce the ignition electrical charge into the spark plug wires. It also has a kill wire, which I disconnected, and found there was still no spark. I then measured the resistance (ohm meter) from each plug back to the laminate/ground and found an open circuit. As this is the secondary of the "coil" it should measure in the neighborhood of 3K ohms, per an on-line reference. I have ordered a new Ignition Unit, expect it will arrive tomorrow. It came for about $35 delivered, a good bit less than for an Onan I'll bet. I end up with a completely new Ignition with this one part. I'll post here if this fixes the problem, if it doesn't there must be something wrong with my trouble shooting method or with the magnet/installation. I have also found the gap should be a bit over 0.01" or the thickness of a business card. As for the authenticity of the GT6000 claim, the manual shows 917.255970, no mention of GT6000, and the hood has "Diehard" and "Gold 18 HP" which refers the the B&S engine. The front, below the "grill" is a lable: GT6000. The tractor was purchased in April 1993, and was not the top-of-the-line, which I think came in a dark gray color and had an Onan engine. The engine has about 1500 hours on it, and is "tough as nails" as is the 2x3 manual transmission (6 forward, 2 reverse), and the frame. It has been a good tractor; this and a fuel diaphragm replacement are the only engine repairs to date. It may be on its third set of plugs, and the full air cleaner components were replace a couple of years back. It has a washable prefilter.

You will only make a bad situation worse with the jack, it is not a truck frame. One of the deck hangers is likely bent or has come off the pin. They are not difficult to replace. If you are not mechanically inclined, best to take it to a qualified service shop.

It's one of the Red Maples...there are several different kinds..I'm not sure which it is. It was bought for the county park Denny works at but they didn't want it because it had a scar on the trunk from one of those plastic ties the put around them to tie them to the pole that is in the pot. It had gotten too tight..they thought it might die. But you can't hardly see the mark this year...it seems to be growing out of it. I'm glad we gave it a chance. patti