My apologies and thanks for responding. Here's a picture that I hope explains my issue better. Everything works, though not as expected, with choke in starting position.
I bought a used John Deere ZTrak 425. It does okay for the most part. However, something is wrong. Whenever I put the throttle in the "mow" position, the engine dies. When the mower has worked for me, it's with the PTO engaged and choke wide open. Even then the mower seems to be lacking the...