I called my local repair shop since the problem is over my head, and they said they would look at it for free for about 10 min. After that it's $74/hr.
Well unless he is an expert he's unlikely to know what went wrong in 10 min. Most likely he'd have to tear into the engine, at any rate the labour and parts would kill me. At that point I'm now dealing with a 15yr old mower with a couple hundred dollars worth of new parts and labour which now means I have to keep the mower for another 5 yrs just to get decent use out of it.
Ta-hek with it I just bought a new mower which will hopefully last me another 15 years.
I bought a
Toro