[dbuck]

Originally Posted by Merlin2014

I spoke by phone this morning with a mechanic at a local mower repair shop and he suggested I check the starter drive. He stated that just last week he had a mower in with the Kohler engine and the starter gear was staying up against the flywheel instead of retracting out of the way after startup. That meant that any time an attempt was made to start the engine the starter was trying to turn the engine without getting the usual “running start” at it. In other words the starter didn’t get to spin up before engaging the flywheel (the load) and that was causing the starter to strain badly to spin the engine. He instructed me to spray a very little Wd-40 on the starter shaft and try to coax the gear back down. So I removed the shroud off the engine to check and mine was up against the starter so I did as he had suggested. However mine has been that way all this year and I suspect that I am going to need a new starter as unfortunately I got the starter very hot a number of times trying to get the engine to start. I have been jump starting mine all this year and here lately the starter was still struggling to spin the engine enough for it to start even with a jump. At first I was thinking that the battery was just weak and kept trying to charge it up. After a time I decided to take the battery and get it checked at which time I learned that the battery was good. That’s when I started researching other remedies and that has eventually brought me to this conclusion. I hope this information will be helpful to others and now if someone can direct me to a site with a good price on a new starter I would very much appreciate it. Thanks,

I have had good luck with dbelectrical for starters.