John 345 20hp Kawasaki, back fire through carb

Hey there,

So my father-in-law brought me his john deere 345 saying that it didn't have any power while mowing.

So i dug into it to discover that the left side cylinder wasn't firing due to no spark. Here some mice had chewed through the wires for the pulsar coil. So i spliced the connection back together matching wire colors, I even had someone double check for me because I have troubles with colors. The only thing that was odd was that one wire was really tight and the other had plenty of slack making me think maybe i crossed them?

Keep in mind that this thing started and ran just fine on 1 cylinder and i'm not sure how long he drove it with a dead cylinder. Because apparently he still mowed with it just at a lot slower pace. The engine would really bog down when the deck was engaged, but still worked.

So anyways, Pular coil rewired, confirm spark on that cyclinder, check, I reassemble the engine and try to start it. It fires off almost immediately but runs rough, surges, backfires through the carb, doesn't wanna start, then starts runs kinda, surges, back fires, shoots flame out the carb (I had the air filter off to confirm that it was indeed back firing through carb)

So, is it possible that i have the coil wired backwards and it's not firing at the proper time? It seems to me it would still send the signal at the right rime even if it was backwards, but i really don't know how they work.

I'm going to take it back apart tomorrow and try flipping the wires, just thought i'd ask you experts first.

Take the valve cover off the side that you worked on the coil on. I have had a push rod come off and that will cause them to back fire. The cover has an oring gasket so you will be able to reuse it.

I've has a couple of them through the shop do that. People don't idle them down to cool off and the valve (usually the exhaust) will stick to the seat, when you try to start them the push rod jumps off or bends.