u/No_Rip_4892

Got a Briggs & Stratton 23hp twin cylinder on my JD 425B zero turn. Mowed yesterday with no issue, went to finish up today and it’s all of a sudden running poorly. The sound has changed noticeably, it almost sounds like it’s down a cylinder and has a hollow sound to it, on top of a knock/tick. It’s also down on power significantly, so much so that it struggles to even turn the blades with PTO engaged. It’s now emitting a noticeable amount of black smoke as well.

Engine has 600 hours on it, one owner and I’ve always changed oil and done all other scheduled maintenance. This year it got an oil change, fresh plugs, fresh air filter, and fresh fuel filter. The oil level today was at the bottom of the “fill” mark, but there was no noticeable shimmer or metal in it. I pulled both plugs and one does seem fouled out. I cleaned them up with some light sand paper and brake clean but no change. I’ll get new plugs on Monday to see if it helps. Both plugs are sparking and the air filter is clean with no debris. Fuel is fresh and filter seems clear.

Any thoughts on what may be causing this?

In the process of DIY’ing a small wainscot area by our door. Went with a manufactured stone veneer and doing a sill at the top the whole way. This should have dawned on me sooner, but when the vinyl siding was installed, they let the one window extend past the bottom of the siding, which now makes it difficult for me to do the stone sill. The reason the siding guys did this is because there are two other nearby windows that are slightly higher than the one in question, so they opted to have the siding align with those two. I’m attaching some photos which hopefully better explain this.

All that said, how would you proceed with doing a sill in this area? Just skip past the window and do stone all the way up? Just skip the sill altogether?

Thanks!