Spoke Too Soon!!
I went out this morning to mow the front lawn, and fired up the 1042. Made one loop around the perimeter and, true to form, the stupid thing died at almost the same place.
The other day, after I put the new gas cap on it, I drove it all over the yard and it ran great! But I didn't have the mower deck engaged.
The only difference is that, this morning, I had the mower deck engaged.
So what the heck, other than the physical load of the mower deck, could cause this issue? There must be some sort of switch that senses the mower deck is on. This is one of those jobs that you have to throw a mechanical lever to engage the mower, not one engaged by a switch on the dashboard.
I did, back when my brother still had the machine, replace the cable that connected that lever to the mechanism that let the blades spin. The cable had stretched over the years that he mowed with it. This mechanism is kind of weird in that to disengage the blade rotation it uses a couple of brake shoes to brake the blades to a stop, letting the mower drive belt spin. But I don't recall that had any sort of kill switch, but there must be one.
I'm sort of baffled by this thing right now.
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