I can only speak for the first. There are two reasons for oil loss--1 is faulty seals and or piston rings. This will lead to the oil making its way down to the combustion chamber and getting burned along with the fuel. --2 is loss from gaskets like the valve cover, oil pan,. etc.. If you see oil dripping down the side of the engine, its the latter, If you find oil drops under the tractor after sitting some time, its the latter. If you lose oil and you don't see signs of oil out side of your engine, its the former. If you have 2000+ hours on the motor and you are unsure of how it was maintained through the years, you are probably looking at an engine rebuild in the future. with regard to engine stalls, it can either be the engine needing tune up or your spindles are worn and cause excessive friction. The more you tell us, the more we can tell you. Did the problem with the engine stalling happen when you started using gator blades? Or have you been using them for years and it just started? Also, oil loss is gradual. I cannot imagine you just started losing oil after the last use of your tractor. Has it been happening for some time now? Has it been getting worse and worse? Do you see blue smoke when you run the tractor? The problems you are having are easy to determine (may not be easy to fix!).

A fairly common item is the small bolt that locks the arm that pulls the cable can break. I suppose that it could happen while still in the engage mode- once it is flopped over center won't come back. Just follow the arm under the dash and you will see how it works. There are two sizes, so a serial # or arm will be needed to get the right one.

RD, you are talking apples & oranges here sir. 425 & 445 features a gear type PTO system where the PTO shaft emerges from the front of the rear axle case to power a gear driven MMM deck. Markwisz, you see smoke coming from the two wires that go into the rear axle housing. You have located the wires that power the PTO solenoid. Most likely the solenoid has shorted internally and will have to be replaced. The fact that you see smoke might be proof that the solenoid coil wiring (which is very small wire size) has shorted and burned up. But, it might also indicate that the OEM fuse for that circuit has been replaced with a larger ampacity fuse. Whatever you find regarding the burned out PTO solenoid, please double check to confirm that the fuse has been been replaced with a higher capacity fuse. Fuses are meant to fail when an electrical short or overload occurs. That fact makes me wonder why you are seeing smoke as the second indicator (mower quit being the first) of trouble instead of finding a blown fuse, and that fuse blows again and again when you replace it.??? It could be that the wires that are smoking are too small to blow the fuse in the particular place of the coil the short occurred, but it could be due to a heavier than spec fuse having been put in place at an earlier time (time bomb). Here is a link that might be useful: 425 PTO solenoid

Had the same problem with Cub C (MTD) tractor. Was the battery.