They have an impulse magneto. When you turn the engine over real slow (by hand), you should hear the magneto snap. When it snaps, you should get a healthy bright blue spark from the plug wire to ground. If that mag is working right, and you have fuel, it should start. They are neat machines.
Another poster mentioned a stuck valve. They were common on the old Gravelys, so common that the valve head has a screwdriver slot cut in the top, but if you are feeling hard compression as you crank it, it's probably not stuck. It takes a lot of oomph to spin one over.
If you have access to an old tractor with a belt pulley, you can belt up to it and let the tractor spin it over. I remember the Gravely shop in Harrisburg, Illinois having a big electric motor to spin them. And I knew a fellow who used a big right angle grinder to start a Wisconsin engine on a self propelled concrete saw.
Once you get it started and the bugs worked out, it will usually start the first pull.
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Today's Featured Article - Tractor Traction - by Chris Pratt. Our first bout with traction problems came when cultivatin with our Massey-Harris Pony. Up till then, this tractor had been running a corn grinder and pulling a trailer. It had new unfilled rear tires and no wheel weights. The garden was already sprouting when we hooked up the mid-mount shovel cultivators to the Pony. The seed bed was soft enough that the rear end would spin and slowly work its way to the downhill side of the gardens slight incline. From this, we learned our lesson sinc
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