Lawn mower blade shaft moves up and down!

likesowls

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I have a fairly new (2-3 years old) Snapper self propelled lawn mower that I can not get to start and is even hard to turn the flywheel. I noticed that the shaft that hold the lawn mower blade goes freely up and down with just a little bit of effort and currently barely scrapes the circular undercarriage of the mower. I am going to try to take off the flywheel but, in all honesty, have no clue what I am looking for other than potential clues.
Any ideas? Many thanks for any input. I did hit some soft soil while trying to mow close to my gardens a couple of times; once caused the mower to stop but it started right back up and I raised the wheels another notch higher.
 

lostsole69

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crank shaft bearings all the oil must have leaked out
 

flyerdan

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If the blade goes up and down but the flywheel won't move, I'd suspect that it has a blade clutch assembly that has some bearings fail. If the engine had seized enough to bind the crank it wouldn't have play in either direction.
 
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