:wall: I am going crazy!! I don't need help with engine parts which seems to be all you find anywhere you look. I need to see illustrations of my lawn mower and point to a part and say THERE! that's what I think is broken. I am so frustrated. I have a used, self-propelled walk behind lawn mower I guess bought at ACE Hardware beacuse that's what it says on the front of the body. Engine is Briggs & Stratton Model 122-118R003. It is 5 HP, 21" blade or cut. It no longer self propells. This is all up at the top of the handle that I am talking about. The throttle handle works fine, it runs fine, idles fine, etc. The smaller lever-like handle that I guess engages the mower to go forward has no tension anymore, you pull the handle and it goes back as far as it can with no tension at all. I took apart the little plastic housing assembly below where it is stamped on the mower "Tighten" with an arrow pointing down. Without taking the housing off you couldn't turn the plastic cog-like fatter wheel to tighten anything. The metal cable that runs to the housing of the lawn mower engine from inside this housing slips in and out of it's appropriate place fine, nothing fraying, more silver wire than I would like to see going toward the lever on the right so I see it does need tightening. When you take the separate toothed plastic wheel out of the housing an axle-like plastic part is attached to it (looks molded on) on the left and that slips onto the black plastic line going toward the engine with the silver metal running through it entirely. The right part of this small piece is the attached plastic toothed fatter wheel which also has the metal line threaded thru it which then slips into the round notch that holds the line in place with a fater vertical piece of metal attached to the end. Nothing tightens. The only thing I am guessing could be wrong if something IS wrong near the top handle is that the toothed round wheel has a plastic threaded part molded to it on the right side which, logically, seems it would screw into something, but there is nothing there. The larger abutting casing for the lever has an opening on the right bottom side that, when you stick your finger into, you can touch the silver wire and the plastic wheel with a seemingly empty amount of space there. Has something fallen out of this space to the right of the wheel that is about 2" horizontal with a thickness of about 1/2" that should be threading onto the plastic wheel which sits right below the spot where it says TIGHTEN above it on the top of the handle? Should I be looking for some plastic part somewhere in my grass that might attach back and then allow tightening/tension to the lever which engages the mower to move forward? OR, is there something that came loose under the metal housing on the engine that the black cord runs into? It SEEMS that I might be missing a part on the handle, but, :wall: I can't find any photographs or illustrations of the workings of the top part of ANY lawn mower to even try to take an educated guess. I don't want to buy any manuals or videos or CD's, what a rip-off. I just want to see a picture of the parts that make up the area I am talking about. Briggs does sell the repair manual, parts book, video and CD if you want to buy it. Jeese. Hopefully someone will understand what I'm talking about here and can direct me to where I need to go to see what might be missing. Ugh. Thanks for your time and any help you can give. Arlykat :wall:

I finished mowing my lawn and shut off my mower to clean it. When I went to restart it, it ran rough which I thought was because the fuel was low and I parked it on a slope to clean it. It ran and I put it away. Two weeks later, I went to start it and it was dead. I charged the battery and nothing. I tried boosting it and still dead so don't think it's the battery. I had a quick look and everything looked OK (wires, connections). Where do I start and how do I test the individual components (key switch, safety switches etc). The model number is 944.600041 Thanks in advance. TM