Governor DOA. OK to run anyway?

[tadawson]

You can't mow at that setting! The throttle does *NOT* set speed, but rather fuel/power delivered - shaft speed is then directly related to load on the engine. So, what that means is that to avoid overspeeding, you can only set the throttle limit with no load (which is a very, very, low power setting). Hit the grass and speed will either sag massively, or it may stall outright. You would be amazed at the difference in throttle butterfly position between idle and full load with the exact same shaft speed.

 

[upupandaway]

True, true. And I thought about it. The parts are available and cheap. But I had to ask myself, if I always ran the mower at the same speed, and if I never cut tall thick grass, what good is the governor really doing me anyway?

I had a Snowbird many moons ago that had the same problem. I did what u are considering - connected the cable straight to the throttle . I just needed to manually give it a little more gas when throwing snow.
For your situation, i think if anything broke off it would be sitting at the bottom of the sump. It is not like you cut grass going 20mph off roading for it to bounce around and break something. Then again, this is a hacker point of view vs repair it properly for a customer.