G'day Bruce. Thanks for that, the starter rope is a good idea. I've got all sorts of bits of rope with my work gear so I should have thought of that too.
I'm slowly building up to decent gear, but with 5 kids and work-equipment, I kinda have to make do with what I can. It makes perfect sense of course, the better the equipment, the better the job.
The battery has been taking a charge over night and I've actually had the engine firing up a few times. Blowing white smoke (excess oil i'm guessing) and farting a bit before dying off again. (Well at least it's a start!!) I'm assuming the carby needs adjusting after I pulled it apart to blow the crap out, but without it running it's hard to know HOW to adjust it, and the battery keeps loosing it's charge keeping it ticking over.
I've since realised the chain of events leading to the con-rod blowing wasn't just the low oil and previous stress. When I hit the tradies pliers hiding in the long grass it seems to have sheared the flywheel key instead of damaging the crank-shaft, so that was sitting off centre and presumably affecting the spark timing. I'm wondering if this is why the battery drained out in the first place. At a very un-educated guess that's caused the engine to keep stalling with the air-filter in place (would run if I took it off).
Leaving it sitting on an angle at the bottom of the hill (where I had to leave it stranded over night) with bugger all oil in it would have been the cause of it blowing the con-rod the next morning when I chucked the re-charged battery back in and fired it up.
Now to track down a replacement flywheel key!! I've ordered a briggs & stratton repair manual on cd-rom so that'll be very handy once it arrives I'm sure. In the mean time, does any of this make sense to you guys??
