Hello everyone, I'm new here. I have worked on mowers all my life and have always been successful at it until now. I have bought an old murray for my son, was a 1 owner and had been sitting for a while, needed a battery. I put a battery in and it fired right up. Then took it to my son, fired it up, pulled it into his carport and it cut off and hasn't hit a lick since. went ahead and rebuilt carb because when it was running it was rough, bowl was full of grass and float had a hole in it. Got that fixed and checked fire at coil, was real weak so I replaced coil setting gap with a dollar bill and then pulled plug. It was fouled so I replaced it. Now I have no fire so I put old coil back on and still no fire. I then pop flywheel and find a half stator, replaced it and still no fire. So I then check fuse it was blown,pop a new on in and it blows. I then started checking wiring harness and everthing was good so I started jumping safety switches, they all checked out and then I unplugged the hot wire to the stator and fuse did not blow so at this point I'm thinking another bad stator so I replaced the half stator wth a whole stator which had 2 wires as opposed to the half stator with only one. I connected black hot to the black wire on the new one and left red one un-connected, blowed fuse. Then connected black hot to the red wire and left black un-connected, fuse did not blow, starter now engages but the new stator starts smoking. It's got me befuddled but my final thought is the switch is actually grounding out. Would like to get the opinion of some folks that do this day in and day out before I spend any more money on the damned thing