I have a 2000 murray rider with a 20 hp, when trying to start it turns over really slow, I've replaced the battery and starter. I have had it started 1 time and ran good, drove it around for abot 15 min but when I shut it off still hard to start, was told it could be a bad compression release or the valves needed to be adjusted, what is your take on this? Any help?

Adjust the valves, very rare for a compression release to fail. Compression release is very dependent on valve clearence.


Don

Absolutely adjust the valves first. And a lot of folks don't want to replace the rocker arm cover gasket(valve cover gasket), but for about $3.00, you don't have to tear it back off and put a new one on later. Place old towels under valve cover to catch a small amount of oil when you remove the cover.

Ohh , and you probably had a good starter and battery, retain the old starter for future use.