UPDATE TIME FINALLY!!! YEAH!!!
So, I was mowing my lawn a couple of weeks ago and towards the end, my 850 started making some absolutely atrocious noises (some partial video hopefully to come soon to show you...), so I shut it down immediately. I was worried at first something inside the engine let go!

But after a quick inspection and oil change for no reason (but you can never be too safe...), I isolated it to the old, beat Starter/Generator that could barely even turn over the engine in the first place.
So, I took it down to Con-Rel Auto Electric to have them rebuild my Delco Starter/Generator. I just got it back Wednesday morning after they had it for a week. It cost me around $125 with tax (the tag in the photo shows $119, but without tax...) They told me the bearings in it were totally SHOT and they could hardly even turn the pully by hand anymore! (That might have been zapping some horses from my little 8.25HP Wisconsin then!!) It also needed a new armiture and some other stuff, but basically it is a new starter/generator on the inside now. They even cleaned up the case and painted it so it looked like new! Better than a reman starter you'd buy off the shelf even and for a bit cheaper (although I can't imagine a reman starter/generator for some of these would be much more than $150-$175 if you could find one, so I don't think I was saving all THAT much, but they did do a really nice job!!)
So, here's the pictures of my Starter/Generator when I got it back from Con-Rel:



They did SUCH a nice job on it and it looked so nice, I hated to even do anything to it before I put it on my tractor! But while it did look nice with the Black and Grey
paint job, I thought it would still look odd on my Bolens when everything else on it is brown. The guys at Con-Rel said they didn't have any brown paint like what was
on it when I gave it to them, otherwise they would have painted it that color for me already! (That would have been nice of them...) But, anyways, I ended up kind of
reluctantly spraying it down with some Rust-Oleum Dark Brown paint anyways before installing it:


I also took the time while I had it apart anyways to ditch the old belt and throw on the new cogged belt I bought from...
..from...
well, from *SOMEONE* on this board, I won't say whom...

(The old belt was kind of slippery on the "V" part where it runs in the pulley groove. Probably got glazed over a bit from slipping around the
almost totally seized up starter/generator pulley all this time! Not good for it at all...)
So, here is the newly painted starter/generator mounted on the tractor:





All I can say right now is that the new Starter/Generator works great and turns over the engine much easier and faster now! It starts up in no time now! The ammeter
even seems to work more normally now and doesn't flop around as much like it did in a previous video I posted. I'm assuming then that it is charging the battery better
now than it was (or wasn't) before. The engine seems to have a lot more power now too and it runs much better, especially at lower throttle above idle. It doesn't seem
to bog down as badly like it did before either. I just mowed a lawn today with it that was fairly long in mostly 2nd gear, Hi-Range and it only slightly bogged down in some
of the heavier grass, but wasn't even that noticeable. It didn't have any issues with not cutting grass or "streaking" either that I had some problems with before.
It is just hard to imagine that there were so many problems caused that ended up being traceable to the old Starter/Generator being bad and once fixing that, so many things have improved with this tractor's performance now! The one nagging thing that persists is the engine knocking and the governor/throttle is still a bit touchy and hard to control, but other than that, this thing has just gotten so much better now that I fixed the Starter/Generator!
Hopefully more to come soon, maybe a few more videos of it running, and
eventually it will be all together with some new decals on it too!!! Here's hoping!!
Edited by MailmAn, August 30, 2012 - 10:24 PM.