its been running great recently but it seems the engage lever that starts the blade to spin hasnt been working right. like to put the mower away i would have to turn mower off then disengage to stop the blade from spinning then turn mower back on and then drive it up under my tool shed roof. it seemed to still work so i lived with that. im thinking maybe now why it wont start is because the mechanism is still engaged, will a craftsman riding lawn mower start if the blade is engaged? if not what troubleshooting should i do, im pretty good at fixing stuff but i dont know where to start with this, any help would be greatly appreciated.

I am trying to build a beefed up go kart and I have a lawn mower engine that I can use but lawn mower engines are vertical driven and a go kart is usually driven with a horizontal mount. How do I make the conversion, should I just use a gear box? Also how do the governors work, my budy build one with an old 5hp briggs and stratton and he tore the governor off why did he do this? any ideas?...thanx guys.[IMG]http://goo.gl/cn8OF4[/IMG]