Craftsman rear engine lawnmower wont start

[EricVader]

Not my riding lawn mower, its a relatives. The mower has been sitting for close to three years. At first it wouldn't crank. I found a bad pto switch. Now it turns over but will not fire. I changed all the old fuel out, cleaned the carb. I checked spark and there is spark. I poured gas into the carb and it still wont fire up. So what am I overlooking here? I'm a master auto mechanic but I am new school and dont have any experience with carburetors. (Or small engine repairs) So any advice would be great, I live over 1500 miles away and im leaving soon so it would be nice to get this thing going for them.

The last time it was ran they said it was fine.

Craftsman model 247.25000 if that helps.

 

[bertsmobile1]

Engine make and full model number would be a big help.
Try a new plug for starters.
Resistance increases under pressure so a slightly fouled plug will spark out in the air but under compression pressure the spark tracks down the side of the plug so no bang bang bang.

No joy there pull the plug & rocker cover off.
Both valves are the same length, have the same lift and sit at the same height off the head floor.
Fairly common to get some rust on one stem holding a valve open.

 

[EricVader]

Mtd 420cc engine year 2012

Uses a hyuai carb.

I got it running for a little bit, I'm trying to see if I hooked up the choke linkage, throttle and spring correctly. Can't find a diagram anywhere...no I'm not talking about the parts listing which doesn't help.

I have the choke linkage hooked up to the throttle control cable and the throttle and spring hooked up to the governor arm. The length of the rods seem like that's the only way they go. Does this sound right?

 

[bertsmobile1]

Throttle cable goes to some sort of lever with a spring on it.
Spring goes to governor lever
other end of governor lever goes to throttle butterfly

Choke will have some sort of loose linkage that only gets moved in the last 1/4 of throttle cable movement
Usually a little tab that pushes on another lever.

A photo with all of the linkages in nice sharp clean focus would help so stick your phone/ camera on a solid object.
At least 1/2 the photos posted are so fuzzy to be useless.