A little stumped now....

[Smokeycub]

That's great Stanton! That's being a great neighbor and fellow Cubber! I'm sure you'll sort it out. Looking forward to hearing what the outcome of the diagnosis/repairs are.

[Stanton]

Got out to Matt's house Sunday afternoon. He had been running it approximately 30 minutes prior and said it ran fine with mower engaged in 1st gear, then bogged down when in 2nd going up a slight slope. This was around his back yard with short grass (blades above the grass at this point; no load on blades).

Whether right or wrong, I thought 30 min was long enough for a dry compression test to be run, so did it and wrote down results and left with Matt. From what I remember, cylinder #1 was 45 PSI, #2 at 90 PSI, #3 at 96 PSI, and #4 about 93 PSI. He didn't have any extra oil on hand to use for a wet test. Put the plugs back in and tried to start it; flooded. Couldn't get it re-started. Battery was starting to loose power from cranking and we were way out in the middle of his back yard with no outlet for the charger. I showed Matt how to find TDC, but the compression was so low in #1 that I could hardly feel the pressure against my finger in the spark plug hole.

The belt for the mower and was in poor shape; a lot of small tears and rough spots and it looked old. What concerned me most about it was the angle at which the belt was aligned to the rear pulleys. It appeared to me that the belt was not configured through the deck pulleys correctly to align with the rear pulleys. Without a mower manual, we just didn't know. Due to time, we couldn't get the valve cover off without dismantling most of the left side (the underslung exhaust, the hydro lines to/from the pump, carb, etc.). Was wanting to adjust his valves while there. He didn't have hydraulic fluid to refill for removing the hydro lines, so that weighed in on our decision not to dismantle.

I encouraged Matt to take a couple pictures of the mower deck and belt setup, go to the Woods website and submit the pics (and on here), perhaps they'd be able to ID the model or at least confirm it is a Woods. Also for him to check out any online manuals for his or similar finish mower setup--I'm thinking with the way the belt comes off the rear pulleys at such a sharp angle to/from the deck pulleys AND the fact #1 cylinder is too little compression, trying to run the mower in 2nd is too much load for it to handle.

Was really hoping things would turn out better for us, but we did identify low compression in #1 cylinder which will need attention.

[Mortgaged]

I had a similar problem on my 184 where every time I would put a load on the tractor it would die. Went through a full tune-up, cleaned carb, fresh gas, etc. and it didn't make any difference. It always started quickly and seemed to run great other than this problem. So I started thinking the engine was worn out?

Finally after looking through the manual I saw the section for setting the governor and it immediately hit me that this could be the problem! Sure enough, when I checked it out it was at least a 1/4" off (too long) which was resulting in the carburetor not reacting quickly enough. I moved the clevis to the correct length to reset the governor and it now runs like a champ! This took less than 15 minutes to do and is very easy to complete with only a few tools needed. The hardest part was keeping track of the little clevis pin and not losing it in the tractor.

Since I didn't see this listed, it may be worth a try before you tear down the engine?

Also, on my dad's 52 cub with 60" mower, it took a lot of clutch "greasing" to get the tractor to start with the deck pto engaged in 3rd gear. Not so much with 2nd, and less with 1st. As others have said, make sure you're not loading it when you get started. The energy required to get those blades spinning takes all the power that engine has. Make sure your mower spindles are greased and turn freely as well. And if you haven't figured it out yet, when you need to stop the tractor you are also stopping the mower blades so make sure the brakes are working and give yourself a little extra stopping distance.

I wouldn't worry about electrical issue, it's not related to the engine bogging/dying once it's started. You will want to treat this as a separate problem.