Well, I pulled it apart and the disk was in correctly, there was no obvious damage anywhere, but noticed some rust on the pressure plate where the clutch apparently was setting. I can hardly believe that it was rusted fast, just doesn't make sense.Stared at the thing about 30 minutes trying to figure out why this thing was stuck, and about all I could come up with was that when I assembled the tractor halves the first time, I had removed the 3 pressure plate bolts that draws the plate to the clutch housing, and, probably, the clutch disk gear was offset from the clutch gear. Possibly what happened was when I assembled it, I put a ton of pressure against the center shaft, and it never seated properly, but that doesn't make sense to me either, or I would think there would have been some obvious damage. I DID notice there is about 1/2-1" of front to back play in the center shaft if you grab it and move it. Not sure that is a problem, or a result of my first joining. Anyway, this time on joining the tractor halves, I left in the 3 pressure plate bolts, made sure the gears (female and male) were in fairly close relative alignment, and assembled very slowly, making sure I didn't force anything. Now, it works just fine. A real puzzle to me. Any ideas or concerns from you folks?
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