Clean your carburetor's main circuit. Your carburetor contains two "circuits." One is the main circuit, and it puts gas into the engine with the "choke" off. The other is the enrichment circuit, which puts more gas into the engine because a cold engine needs a richer fuel/air mixture than a warm one. If your engine only runs with the choke on, that means no gas is coming in via the main circuit, which means it's clogged. Clean that out good and it should fix the problem.
Try cleaning you carburator, check your fuel filter, your float, could be any of these.
If it runs with the choke on, and then- just won't with the choke off,, gas flow is restricted..
clean the carb
Your Briggs and Stratton 5.5hp only runs with the choke on because it needs a tune up.
Clean and adjust the carburetor. Also clean the air filter.
More than likely, the fuel filter is clogged or dirty.
When you say the engine will turn over only when in choke, I assume you mean it runs while chokedand then dies when you let off the choke. Check the fuel filter,the air filter,makecarburetor adjustments if necessary and ultimately, checkthe throttle linkage.
check the carburetor and make sure the air cleaner is clean
If it runs with the choke on, Then it will not do any good to adjust them. It is running lean/ not getting fuel. The carburetors have dirt in the fuel jets and that is why it won't run when choke is off. When choke is on that richins the fuel up and it try's to run. Need to clean the carbs out.
Our runs 33mph on pavement.
This is a very old model, so I would say that probably stiffened with age.
Then it is probably being starved of fuel, check that the fuel filter isn't clogged, if that is OK that there could be a blockage in the carburetta.