Help! My Craftsman model number 917.377690 has fallen and it can't get up. I was mowing my lawn and the engin died and then the deck was covered in oil. Obviously, I am thinking there is a blown gasket, but I have never worked on this before. This has engine 143.006706. I am getting no resistance when I pull the starter cord now. Could this be simply the head gasket, or are there bigger problems that I need to worry about. My main question is: Is this worth taking the engine apart, or should I just scrap it? Any help would be appreciated.

Picked up this cool little Forest Gump style mower yesterday. 8hp B&S engine (must be old, it's white) Pull start works fine, but key just causes solenoid to click. I'm charging the battery now; might be the easy fix. Any other suggestions? I noticed a wire hanging between the battery and engine, and there is no obvious point for it to connect. The wire is bolted to another wire that goes toward the spark plug. The bolted connection has a square, metal, u-shaped thing that kinda looks like a dual spade connector (l_l, bolts and wires would be on bottom of "u" thing). [B]Where is this supposed to go?[/B] Pretty sure it's not supposed to just be floating in space. EDIT: Oh yeah. The wire comes from the solenoid compartment, crosses to the location b/w battery and engine, then goes into engine toward spark plug. Not sure where it terminates (haven't opened up that far yet). One of the spade looking ends is partially covered in plastic. hard to tell, but looks like the other one used to be. Prob not an electrical connector. Just an old wire clip?