Ralph Mowery wrote:
....
My son had a problem similar to this. I looked at it and the air filter had
saturated with oil and no air could get to the engine. Leave the filter
element out and see if the engine will start.
I don' t think the oil was getting past the piston as the engine only had
about 5 hours of run time. I think it was sucked in from the ventilation
tube from the crank case to the air inlet but could be wrong on this.

[not related to the OP's post, but it might
be helpful to know for the future]

some mowers will leak oil if tipped too far.
ours will saturate the air filter with oil if
tipped to one side (but not the other).

it just may be that the mower was tipped
during transport and will be ok otherwise.


songbird