Haveing MAG Trouble on MY A

To get your mag back in time you need to bring No1 piston to TDC on the compression stroke. Remove No1 plug near the radiator and hold your thumb over the plug hole while someone hand cranks the engine slowly until you feel compression against your thumb. Then drop a "large handle screwdriver" on top of the piston and watch it rise until it stops. Rotate the rotor to the No1 plug tower and install the mag. Hal
PS: Can you get a closeup picture of those gears? You can email a picture to me. Hal

Pull your #1 plug and have someone crank the engine slowly by hand until you start to feel the air blowing out by your finger as you stick it in the plug hole. Take a light and crank slowly until you see the #1 piston near the top through the hole for the plug. When it's close you can move it back and forth by hand with the fan blades.

Then crawl up underneath and look through the hole on the bottom of the bell-housing/torquetube. You may have to remove the cover which will likely be held in place by a wing nut. Look up and a little forward through that hole and you'll be looking at the bottom of the flywheel. It's often obscured by rust, but there is a fine line stamped into the flywheel, running front to back. If you have it all cleaned up it will also be marked TC1-4 near that line. If you've got the piston as close to top as you can eyeball it through the plug hole, you should be able to find the line near the bottom of the flywheel, even if it takes a little brushing to clean off the rust to find it.

Just ahead of all that, still looking up from underneath, is the backside of the cover on the lower half of the bell housing. There is an easy to see, very pronounced nub inside there on the back of that piece, about even with the edge of the flywheel. When the line on the flywheel is lined up with the center of that nub you're at TDC, and can get on about the business of timing your mag.

I resorted to a piece of bent fence wire in the plug hole after the thumb in the hole routine. Much simpler, especially if you are by yourself.
Karl

That last little bit of getting it lined up, assuming you can find the mark, isn't so bad if you use the fan to move the engine.

Another trick is, once you've found TDC, to mark the front of the timing cover and the back of the crank pulley each with marks that line up at TDC. Lines with markers, paint dots, scratches in the paint, anything that will show you when she's at TDC, and all you have to do is make sure that you're on compression on #1 to use the marks and the fan blades to turn her into place.

I've made a habit (it's a lot easier if you have the tractor split and remember to do it - that last part about remembering is the tricky part) of cleaning up that mark and masking it off and painting it with a colot I can see when looking up into the dark.