Alright, I think it's finally running pretty good. I downloaded the carb manual and tinkered (pretty much at random) with some of the settings, and seems to be running pretty well. boggs down a tad every now and then when you give it full throttle, but I'm not too worried about that at this point, p...

So my red herring ended up being the fuel pickup line coming off and falling into the tank. All the other lines look very new. It actually runs now!!.. but only for about 10-20 seconds at a time. I can kind of coax it by playing with the choke while it's running, but eventually it alway dies out. Is...

It's alive!!... well, sort of. I've got really good spark now. All I had to do was sand the points. Now it still won't fire up, but I have a feeling it's a fuel thing. I emptied the whole tank to get rid of the old gas a few weeks ago and put new stuff in with a 50:1 ratio. Do I need to prime the fu...

Haha.. why's that? I'm completely guessing at this point, but I would probably get a new stator plate with the condensers and coils, seals for the flywheel side, and a new ignition coil to replace the one I stupidly pulled the boot off of. I'll take a look at New Breed. I should probably get it apar...

I think my brother has a puller, and I've got a John Deere dealership down the road, so I'll be hitting them up for some parts tomorrow. Thanks for all the input!

Oh geez, gotta love starting "little" projects, only to end up pulling everything apart! Haha. Thanks for the link, I guess I have no choice at this point.

How do I get to those coils? I have the pull-start already taken off.. does that whole side of engine have to come off to get to those?

Ok, so I don't think it's the coils. I actually took the cover off the coils and switched them and they both work, but only on the one side. There are two blue wires coming from the engine going to each coil, and a brown wire connecting them. I guess only the one blue wire is working? What does that...

Ok, I may have spoken too soon about it running fine. It appears than I'm only getting spark on one cylinder (the left side). I swapped the spark plugs just to confirm. I also tried a new sparkplug boot/cap and that didn't work. Looking for a good place to start looking for the issue. I would like t...

Cool, that's kinda what I figured, but just wanted to consult the experts. Thanks again!

So I've acquired a '76 John Deere 300. It's in pretty good condition and seems to run fine but I was curious if this should have electric start? The only reason I ask is because the key has "Stop, Run, and Start" positions like a car would. I don't see a battery under the hood. I'm sort of...