For the ball thing, I agree….I do not believe there was one, I just wanted to be sure. I also agree how could the absence of that cause the issue. As I said that coil pin looked original, the arm looked original and never removed…
Harry, yes the pin was aligned properly with the gasket on the hydro/rear-end, I was told by the guy I bought the gasket from to watch for that. You mention alignment. I have looked and re-looked many times at everything. My cadet is pretty tight in that fashion, no oblong holes, no loose fasteners. So to align the rear end….I really cannot do anything. I also remember there not being hardly any play when re-aligning the pump to reinstall it. With the engine bolts, those 4 bolts take me a while to put in because there is not a bit of wear on the bolts, or the holes in the frame the bolts go through. If you have all the bolts in, but not tight yet…you cannot move that engine at all, it is very snug. I will have to re-mount the engine to fire it up to check that aluminum pulley cup.
Matt, thank you for the idea….I will for sure keep that in mind if it comes down to the last option, but as said before if it is a different problem then we will be wrecking rag joints.
I will do some more checking. My boss mentioned we could hook dial indicators to the engine & hydro and see how far out of line it could be.
On another note too. Before I took this thing apart…I turned over the engine and watched the driveshaft (had the hydro cover removed) and that thing was wobbly as heck….almost like it had been welded wrong from the manufacturer.
As always thanks again for the input, much appreciated!!