I have a 3 year old Toro 20043 Personal Pace Super Recycler mower. My mother bought it while I was away at college, and my brother was its chief care-taker. I have since moved back to the area, went to mow the lawn this year, and no personal pace happened. After changing some (very) dirty oil and inspecting the underside of the mower, the drive belt turned out to be shredded and jammed around the pulley in the rear. I have no idea what happened to the mower while my brother was taking care of it, other than the oil was never changed, and I can infer no other lubricating happened either. He won't fess up to what happened to jam the drive belt up so badly. Cleaned up, the mower is not making any odd sounds or otherwise makes sounds of laboring.

The problem I am having now, is that after replacing the drive belt with a new one from our local Toro authorized dealer, the mower takes off at the full 15mph it is capable of and will not slow down. The mower does not idle, but takes off at top speed as soon as it starts up. The mower is rear wheel drive, and rolls fine when it is off, and makes all the clicking sounds in the correct directions others have described about their personal pace mowers. I have not had success adjusting the tension on the cable that controls the self propel. It seems I can not give it enough slack to relax the tension and keep it from engaging.

From what I can tell I have everything back together right, but something I can't figure out is clearly wrong. (I also can't get the mower to back up when it is running, but I am going to chalk that up to the fact that it is still running full throttle forward). Does anyone know what may be causing this? I have not done much work on a lawn mower before, and by that I mean none, but I am fairly handy and want to get this sorted out soon.