Hi,
I have a 2 yr old John Deere GX345 riding lawn tractor with the Kawasaki motor. Serial number mdg3458114794 with a 54inch cut mower deck. It has 360 hrs on it all mowing my 4 acre lawn. Recently after taking a break in mowing, I tried to restart my tractor and it's wouldn't start. I checked everything I knew but to no avail, so I took it to the local JD dealer where I purchased it. I take very good cary of my JD and have it serviced yearly at this same dealer. They had to literly disassemble the whole engine to diagnos the problem. They found bent push rods in the intake and exhaust valves. They had to have the head shaved and after all said and done, the bill was in excess of $700. Fortunately after a brief discussion with the manager and a quick call to the factory rep, ( since it was just out of warranty) they met met half way on the charges because they couldn't give me a reason why this could have happened. "bad gas" was the suspected cause. Any ideas as to what other reasons could have caused this?

Thanks!

Your valve could have bent , or if it had set for awhile, (couple of months or longer) could have
"frozen" in place, or the tappet arm could have come off, any of these could have caused the pushrod to get bent. Remove the tappet cover(valve cover) , and inspect.

Hi,I had the same problem with our 1998 LX188 when it was only 3 months old done 26 hours was mowing lawn 1.5 acres and went inside to sample hot scones 15min later went to restart mower and would only run on one cylinder, as we are 2hrs from dealer I removed spark plugs and gave compression test, nothing on L/H/ cylinder, removing tappet cover to find push rod bent and out of the rocker, agent supplied new rod and after adjusting tappets I never had any more problems with it. No one cold give ME any answers, sold it 18 months ago to our neighbour and purchased a GX345 now done 90hrs What a machine my wife LOVES it, power steering ,diff lock for our slopes, hydralic deck,I do my own servicing as a mechanic and garage owner.have just purchased another LX188 for our lifestyle block 2hrs away.Its interesting that both machines are Kawasaki water cooled motors.Warren