Simplicity Goes Bang

Went to deer camp a weekend or two ago, and took the old beater tractor up to mow the lawn and the path to the back 40. It's a mid-80's Simplicity 6216, with an 18 horse twin that someone used to replace the original 16 horse engine. This thing is a beast. I can push 8-10 inches of wet snow the length of my driveway with it, clearing a path a little less than 3 feet wide in one pass. It's an impressive machine, though it doesn't look it. We hauled it up in an old 6x12 trailer, also loaded up with a bunch of hunting/camping equipment of Steve's. We unloaded the tractor, and used it to move the trailer practically into the woods, so that nobody could back up, hook up, and haul it off. Then I took it down the path, with Steve, Justice, and Savanna in front of me, clearing large sticks. The object was to mow the ferns and miscellaneous weeds, and blow the leaves off the track. Everything went well, until after I made the turn at the end, and headed back. Halfway back, Steve heard me hit something with the mower. I heard something else, though. What I heard was ye old Briggs and Stratton saying "I've had just about enough of this crap!!!". I idled her down, and she quit, sounding like she was hitting on only one of two cylinders. Well, we couldn't get the poor beast restarted, so we pushed it the rest of the way back to the cabin. I took out one spark plug, and couldn't see the piston moving. Steve took out the other one and said he COULD see it moving. I looked at his side, and sure enough, I could see it. I went back to my side, now that I knew what I was looking for, and still couldn't see it moving. Some sheet metal and a head later, I stuck melted candles to the top of the non-moving piston, and yanked it right out of the cylinder. This is not a good thing, considering all I did to the engine was remove the head. The connecting rod had broken into at least three pieces. Dead horse. Dead horse that we had used to make the trailer inaccessible. Oh boy...