UPDATE JD 240 turns over hard and will not start

Thanks to all who posted. With your help I was able to go in the right direction. I pulled the engine housing off and found a big mouse nest. It was packed in there so tight that it was causing some drag on the flywheel. It was also packed tight under the flywheel as well. I cleaned that all up, but it still did the same thing. Next I pulled the valve cover off and found that the push rod was not in its proper location. The push rod looked like someone had taken a hammer smashed only one end of the just the aluminum part of the push rod. It was about and 1/8” shorter than the new one I purchased. The very metal ends of the push rod looked ok. I suspect that when the mouse nest was still under the engine housing, it caused the engine to heat up to the point of seizing the engine to some degree and this caused the push rod problem. To finish up I cleaned everything up, purchased a new push rod, reassembled everything, set the valve clearance and she runs great. Again thanks to all who posted, these suggestions do help in the trouble shooting process. Jack
 
I had that problem on my Wards tractor several years ago when I was plowing the garden. I found a mice nest packed around the flywheel area. I pulled the head and a piece of sheetmetal. I used a piece of wire to snake out a lot of the material. I used a vacuum cleaner too, but using air pressure was probably the best. I have a picture of that somewhere on the computer. I don't leave any cleaning rags out anymore where mice or chipmunks can get to them
in my mini barn. Hal
 
I finally found that mouse nest pic. Hal
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