Among other things

that have happened recently, our riding lawn mower threw a piston connecting rod about a week and a half ago. As C was doing the neighbors lawn, it went bang. The thrown rod cracked the sump casing (no longer available), broke the cam, damaged the crank shaft, and broke an inspection cover. The oil had recently been changed (still plenty in the crank case now all over the ground), so it wasn't from bad maintenance. It appeared that a bolt on the connecting rod broke, causing the catastrophic failure

As we are still mowing our weeds, this needed to be fixed or replaced. I opted for the fix the existing lawn tractor.

I ordered an engine off eBay for the replacement. There were no exact replacement engines to be had, so I got one that was close, swapping a 21 HP for a 20HP. A new, exact replacement engine costs $1342, and I got an lightly used engine (looks new) for less than 1/3 that cost, including UPS shipping. It is a pressure oil feed, where the old engine was a splash lube.

It arrived and it took me about 15 total hours to install it, 2 hours at a time, because of other time demands, and at least 4 trips to the hardware store for supplies. Today, the lawn mower was completed and it was used for the first time, because of an electrical issues that I created ( knocked a wire off a terminal and had to find which one).

The guy I bought it from told me to mow the lawn one time ( or run the engine for 2-3 hours), then change the oil. I have also done that as well. The new motor worked great.