Hello I did a self check and found that the engine was getting spark, getting gas, and had good compression. It started when cold but would not start when hot and backfired! I thought it might be something in the engine like a bad Valves or bad Keyway but it was not! So this afternoon I had to take our beloved Tractor to the tractor Doctor . He would pick it up for $40 but I rented his trailer for $20 and brought it to him. He just called and said it has a bad cam gear! Like a bad timing chain & timing gears in a car. $450 to fix but the good news is that the Keyway & valves are fine. Some new tractors have a lot of plastic and with the snow blower attachment and triple bagger, it would approx $3300.00 to replace it all. Is it worth fixing? The cam gear is the big gear to the left of the big crank shaft in pic.
Just like I was quoted $450 and the Keyway is good and the valves are good. To replace the tractor with the 3 bin bagger and snow blower attachment it costs approx $3300 !! Also the new lawn tractors have a lot of plastic.
Good that you got it running again. They seem to be decent machines that you see going on Craigslist used for about $500. I have almost the same tractor, except mine has the 20HP V-Twin Briggs & Stratton on it. Mine's been on my $h!tlist all summer. I had gotten it used from someone that didn't maintain it much. Right up front I put a battery and a new front axle in it as the welds failed. Fair enough, it's almost 20 years old. Then in rapid succession came a new starter, 2 starter solenoids (first one was a universal from NAPA that crapped out in 2 weeks) then the cable to engage the blades on the mower deck snapped. So all in all a few minor inconveniences that added up to several frustrating moments. It seems to be good now, fingers crossed. The parts for these things seem to be cheap enough and readily available. I noticed a lot of the chassis parts are universal between makes, which surprised me a lot.
Good work I know someone else who has a Murray tractor with a Briggs 16.5 IC ( Industrial Commercial ) engine that had the cam gear go. Since he replaced the gear it ha been fine ever since. These lawn tractors have different engines with different issues. Some Briggs motors can have valve issues but I do not know which ones. Glad yours is better now too. I also had the pop off steering linkage problem but that can be an easy fix. See How to fix an LT-1000 tractor steering rod that popped off?
Hopefully it lasts another good number of years and you don't need to spend much more than a couple bucks here or there. I had a similar unit, an MTD with hydrostatic, a Briggs ( think it was 16.5 hp), and 42" deck. I had it about 10 years and it was bought about 8 yrs old used for 400. The valve seat messed up and the head was shot about half way through my ownership. I got a used reconditioned head for like $75. I ran it until like 3 years ago when the hydostatic unit stopped allowing it to move under it's own power. Something was slipping internally in the transaxle. I mow my acre lot and know that these units just are not built to be a heavy duty machine. Cub, MTD, craftsman, and others are all the same unit made by the same company. I never towed anything except the leaf sweeper, and my lot isn't really hilly, just slight inclines. I figured it served it's purpose and I ended up getting my dad's heavy duty ariens GT garden tractor. Even that I had to put a new engine into a couple years later as the 30 yr older so engine went. Now this ariens has heavy duty everything, with mid, front, and rear PTO. To replace this tractor with a new one, your probably in the 10k+ range, and even then for that cash, like my neighbors high dollar Simplicity, it's belt driven and nowhere near as well built. My ariens is more inline with a 2wd Kubota, or JD, maybe even better built than those. I expect my ariens GT to outlast me, and it's only a couple years younger than I am. I guess where I'm going is, and trying to be honest and not to sound like a jerk, is that you could buy a new in box 18 hp drop in Kohler engine for the same price as that fix, or a good running similar or newer tractor for that $. Heck, I've seen ariens GT or the S series ( both are really orange New Holland tractors) with a deck for $500 or so if you get lucky. A brand new 46" cut 18.5 hp single cylinder hydrostatic craftsman is $1600 at most box stores. Pretty certain you could use your existing bagger and blower on the newer craftsman I mentioned.
MTD makes a ton of these units. Cub, MTD, white, craftsman, and others are all the same thing, just different colors and sometimes different hoods, but the same chassis.