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In Reply to: JD 317 Questions posted by Jim Bush on Friday, September 19, 2003:
Question 1. The deck itself will work, but you might need different mounting brackets.
Question 2. The "fix" is a new engine. If you do not run on slopes causing parts of the engine to become oil starved, and/or if your engine is not among the oldest of the series 1's, you might get many years of service. On another forum, it was suggested that using a high grade synthetic oil would aid the motor in staying lubricated. I don't know that much about syn oil to say yes or no to that.
Question 3. Air cooled engines were designed to be run at full throttle for maximum air flow to remove heat, for you to get the rated horsepower, to generate the necessary voltage to run the clutch, to generate the design blade speed of your mower blades for the best cut. I suspect that your tractor stops running because you are pulling more electricity out to power the clutch than your alternator is replacing and when the battery is totally discharged in 10 minutes, there is nothing left to provide spark to the ignition.
The engine is the bad part of this tractor, but people get fixated on that and forget that the 317 is an incredibly well built tractor designed for long service AND hard work. So if you can adjust yourself to the fact that the motor is a replaceable wear item and the new motor available is correctly designed, you own a machine quite capable of 40 years of service.