I picked up a John Deere F525 mower that has a 17 HP Kawasaki. I discovered it had no spark, so I took off the flywheel cover and noticed a lot of rust on the magnet and flywheel. Wired brushed it clean, and took off the coil and cleaned it also. Put it all back together and got a very tiny blue spark about a 32" long, if that. checked it on a sparkplug, no spark. Thinking the coil was bad, I went to JD and purchased a new one. Installed it and same thing. I checked the coil gap, made sure It had a good ground. I noticed the magnet on the flywheel is held on with two screws. Could the magnet be weak causing this problem?
Please help, I've pulled apart motors and rebuilt them before. Also in the past I just had to clean the flywheel and they ran after. This one has me stumped.