Well at the beginning of this last summer i was wanting to get a riding lawn and garden tractor with a mower deck so i could mow the grass in my big yard when i get it planted. So i was looking online at a local classifieds site and came across this tractor in a neighboring city for $200. I went to look at it and didn't know much about what it really was while i was looking at it and brought it home with me. The guy i bought it from said it had a bad starter and did not try to fix it and went out and bought a new lawn tractor, and parked the 317 in the weeds. The gentleman said sometimes the starter would grind when he started it and it gradually got worse to where it wouldn't start at all and thats when it was parked. I got it home and unloaded it and looked it over checking evreything out on it, everything looked ok on it. It took me a while while a was checking it out cause the were enough wasp nests on it they could have picked it up and flew it away with them if they would have wanted to. So after all the dead waps i hooked the jumper cables to it and it canked for about a minute and fired right up, and the starter never grinding noises, the tractor had sat for about a year and a half before i bought it too. So all that was wrong was the battery, i bought a battery and crimped new cable ends on and i have not had a seconds trouble with it. I plan to build a sleeve hitch for it along with a rear scraper blade and a custom built 3 bottom plow. and after that i'll repaint it and work it over. I have put new front v61's tires on the front and i had some atv tires in storage i mounted on some rear rims plow the dirt work next spring.