Just mention another option that I have seen in magazines and my former next door neighbor had one. You remove the recoil, replace it with a v-belt pulley (IF your engine does not already have a drum sticking up on the crankshaft Tecumseh style) mount a 1/4 hp or so electic motor, with 1-1/2" or so pulley, vertically on a garage wall stud with pulley height to match the one you installed on the mower. Slip a V-Belt over pulleys, plug in or turn on electric motor, pull back on lawn mower handle to tighten belt, push forward and flip belt off (if it doen't by its self)when mower starts. Check direction of rotation of the electric motor first and mount in which ever direction gives you the right rotation. Walt Conner

I didn't have to replace the starter. For some reason I had thought the "Bendix spring" was within the starter case. The link provided by bill_kapaun cleared that up...thanks :-) Although my Craftsman manual has the same drawings, those look like they were copied on a 30 year-old Xerox. The original Briggs drawings are much clearer. Once I realized the spring was outside of the starter, I took another look and found a lot of grass and twigs between the plastic cowling and starter. It was clogging the Bendix so badly that it couldn't push the starter gear up into the flywheel. I cleared it by wedging needle-nose pliers and a thin metal ruler in the gap. After five minutes of this, the engine cranked just fine. ...and cranked...and cranked... It woudn't start! The smell of gasoline in my shed told me it wasn't a fuel-delivery problem. Compression sounds from the exhaust told me that the engine was probably OK. That left spark. Pulled the spark-plug wire out and stuck a long screwdriver in the end. Touched that to a metal part on the mower while cranking and saw no spark. Followed the wire to under the engine cowling and found more grass and twigs. There was so much of it that the ignition coil and much of the spark plug wire was buried. Even so, all of that junk shouldn't kill the spark unless they were compromised in some way. So I wound up removing the plastic cowling after all. Why on Earth does Briggs use Torx bolts in front and hex bolts in the back? I didn't have a large enough Torx bit, so I loosened the front bolts with Channel-Lock pliers. The top of the engine was COVERED with grass, leaves, and twigs. It was packed tightly into the cooling fins. I smelled a rat...or more precisely, a MOUSE. Sure enough, I found what was left of the spark-plug wire encased in nesting material. The little bahstud had gnawed the insulator all the way down to the conductor. I guess mice don't like copper cuz that's where it stopped. The damp plant material was shorting the ignition to ground. A spark does little good OUTSIDE of the motor. I could see that Briggs saved money on the ignition system. The ignition module, coil, and spark-plug wire are integrated. To replace the wire I would have to buy the entire module. Instead I repaired it by splitting a piece of old fuel hose down the middle and covering the length of bare wire with it. My dad had bought the hose 15 years ago when car engines were still carbeureted. While it was useless on today's fuel-injected cars, it did just fine as an insulator. I cleaned out the cooling fins with a thin screwdriver. I scraped off more junk around the starter gear for good measure. Little mousey was busy making a home out of my LT3000 yet never paid me a dime in rent. After repairs, the mower started on the first crank. I put it to work over the weekend. The motor ran as well as when I first bought the Craftsman two seasons ago. Not bad for a 1000-dollar lawn tractor. With luck, I'll be saying that ten seasons from now. Thanks for the help and advice! Peace. Marco

Knowing what engine etc. would be very helpful.... You are probably having trouble with the brush holders. Sometimes you'll see a "pin hole" in the holder where you can slide a thin wire (straightened paper clip) in to keep the brushes retracted enough to get them started. Sometimes a piece of string (sewing thread) can be used if the case is "vented" near the brush holders. Other times, a long, thin screw driver can be used. Just barely ease each brush SLIGHTLY over the commutator at a time. Just stay CALM and things go better.

I'm glad I posted this -- I'm learning all sorts of things! I didn't realize that sourdough isn't necessarily sour -- but it makes sense the commerical stuff is more so. (I had a friend's homemade sourdough recently, and while it was a very nice bread I remember thinking it wasn't nearly sour enough!) The sour taste is really what I'm going for -- if I can't get that going naturally, I'll looking into adding the taste in with other things. (I picked up a littl container of buttermilk powder for another recipe -- that might be a good taste to play around with!) Thanks for the explanation on acidity and the viscosity of the starter, Carol; that's helps a lot. The alchemy of baking has always intimidated me -- it's good to have a clearer idea of what's going on. I'll keep plugging away for a while longer with this starter, perhaps feed it whole wheat for a while and see if that builds up it's puny flour-lifting muscles. If not, the soured yeast dough may be the way to go, jessica; I didn't know you could do that. It might actually be better way to go, given the infrequency with which I bake. I'm still going to work with this starter -- Ill keep you posted!