Follow-up on free, swimming tractor:
I installed a new battery, new bolts, in terminals, depressed clutch pedal, turned key, it cranked about 10 turns, and started! HMMM! (To the purists, of course, i checked the pertinent things before attempting to start it-i'm not that dumb!) N'yaa N'yaaa,yaaa!
It needs a new deck belt, and some rust cleanup on deck.
Yesterday, a guy left his almost new Troybilt rotary lawn mower for a tune-up-said he couldn't start it. I tried today, for 2 hours, and got NOTHING, except when i shot some starting fluid into the carb throat. Upon further look-see, i found it had no primer bulb, nor a choke! The mower looks un-used, like brand new! And no, i wasn't trying to start it with an empty tank! I don't think it had any emission control junk on it! Maybe it was designed to not run-sort of a display piece, something they could park outside a store to show it off to prospective customers! It has a Lowe's sticker on it.
there is also a sticker on the air filter cover: "No primer/ No choke". they forgot 2 more words: "No Run."

Rusty, That sounds like one of the Briggs 675 ex series with ready start. They are suppose to satrt easily according to thier advertisement. Probably like the Tecumseh/ Craftsman Eager 1 engines. When they worked they were fine, out of kilter and you had to do some work.
I have a briggs ready start that is a few years old. I just manually prime it and it runs fine. The choke mechanism looks simple enough, but I have not wasted a lot of time trying to fine tune. It is just a spring loaded flapper that opens air is force over the vane. a thermostat type device is supposed to hold it open when starting a hot engine. I would vote for an old fashion manual choke anytime.

Here is a link that might be useful: Briggs and Stratton Ready Start

The crick rizz.... Rusty, I hope you don't mind, but that's going to be the hook for the next song i write....