Just wanted to post an update to my issue. While following the troubleshooting offered by the Technical Manual, I started by testing the electrical components, first the battery and the cables attached to it, made sure battery was providing enough juice, more than 12v which mine was putting out 12.4v. I invested in a little voltage meter at the local Harbor Freight store, given that in the past I've wished I had access to one, I decide to splurge a little and go with the $39 one rather than the $6, although I think that would've done the job just as good. Once I checked the battery I moved to the fuses and they checked good as well. I then tested the Starter relay according to the instructions in the tech manual and that one checked out all good too... Given that my main issue was not only the fact that I wasn't able to crank the motor, it wouldn't even make a noise when the ignition was turned; but the fact that my lights wouldn't turn on at all and the service hour meter wasn't even displaying anything either, I decided to check the cables leading out from the battery. I triple checked the polarity of the battery cables to make sure it wasn't something stupid like that, but they were all good. So I decided to follow the cables from the lights to see where they connected to the battery or to what, that led me to the starter key switch where you basically stick the key to turn the ignition. The handy dandy tech manual showed me how to test it, which simply required me to disconnect it and test it with the voltmeter, so I did and it tested good... However, low and behold when I reconnected it back to the main cable on the mower and turn the ignition one click (lights on), the lights came on and so did the service hour meter. I was beyond thrilled. In my case I didn't have to replace any parts and I can only say that the root cause of my problem was either a lose starter key switch or the fact that I cleaned it up from some of the dirt build up when I took it off to tested.
In the end I'm thankful that I got it to work and that it was that simple. I must add that I also fired up the engine. I didn't care that it was 10pm and the neighbors would probably wondered why the heck was I doing that, but I didn't care, I was just happy to make it work. When I first tried to crank it up, it kept trying to fire up but it wouldn't... This was my first symptom before my whole ordeal began as I described on my previous post so I naturally got worried, I didn't want to flood the carburator so I stepped down from the mower and decided to inspect the seat switch, I removed it and it looked good. I decided to manually press the switch while I turned the ignition key to run and this time the engine fired up right away... So now I'm very suspicious of that seat switch needless to say but I didn't experiment further with it. It was getting late and I was happy that worse case scenario it appears that it would be the seat switch...I'll be mowing on Friday and I will test further at that time to see if it was truly the seat switch or it was simply the fact that the carburator had temporarily flooded when I tried to started many times prior.
Anyway, sorry for the long post but I didn't want to go without posting an update of my experience in case that it might help someone else down the road. I am glad for the suggestion from bertsmobile1 to purchase the technical manual. I was able to find it for a very low price and the material it's something that I'm going to be referring to in the future. I must admit, the task of troubleshooting these kind of engines may seem daunting but guides like that are worth if you're willing to take the time to read them. I considered myself handy but even with some of the basic concepts of using a voltage meter and testing switches, relays and the such, is something that just takes a little researching but once you learn it, it's something it's worth knowing for future reference, you'll never know when you'll need it again.
