Hit a stump and damaged the crankshaft key where the blade mounts. Took off blade. Mower starts and seems to run fine (no blade), but the cord pulls out of my hand hard on some pulls. I pulled the flywheel and the key looked fine, put it back together, same problem. Starts and runs easily sometimes, other times I get the kickback. Any ideas?
On push mower engines the blade is used as a type of flywheel. So it is normal to get kickback without the blade attached since the aluminum flywheel doesn't have enough mass to rotate the engine past the moment the spark plug fires.
