Thanks for the reply, The kickback problem was my stupidity! Didn't tighten it down enough just like you said. Sheered the key in half. Thank god I reused the old one for testing - had the new one just waiting to be inserted, and torqued it down good. Lawn tractor runs better then before. Also adjusted the timing when it was apart earlier. Able to cut my lawn finally!!! And with the new flywheel gear no more aligning the flywheel to catch a few good teeth to start :) Also I haven't pulled apart the head, I installed a new oil dipstick seal - will see if it helps the old one was shot. Wasn't burning too much oil just little over time. I'm hoping it was just too much air getting past the old seal. Within a couple of weeks I'm going to revisit the one behind the shed. I need a new starter for it but I think I can resurrect it now. Thanks for the info Walt, may email you when I tackle the other one. Curtis Reno

These should be the two wires comming from the ignition switch. The white wire connects to a spade terminal on a short length of wire that is grounded at the coil. This short wire may have broken of at the coil. You will have to remove the engine cover/fuel tank to see the connection points. The white and black wire terminals from the switch are not interchangeble since they are different sizes.

Astragalus perhaps? Here is a link that might be useful:

The 2nd picture looks like your app of turf builders wasn't even. I'm willing to bet you have a broadcast spreader. If so, you turned too wide at the end of each row. What I try to do to avoid this is lay my header strips at bag rate and then make 2 passes perpindicular to each other at half bag rate.