Posted on 03/29/2016 1:41:46 PM PDT by tumblindice
Spring has sprung, the grass has riz, I wonder where my flowers is. There aren't any because I was too lazy to plant bulbs. I've been here ten years and decided maybe it was time to post a thread. And that some of you might be able to use my five years experience working in a small engine repair shop. I just gave mine the spring thing, and am smelling faintly now of the tang of gasoline.
OK, there's your lawnmower in your garage, shed, barn--or maybe you left her with gas in the tank sitting out in the freezing rain and snow all winter. (You may have a problem later.) First make sure she's not loade--I mean, make sure the spark plug pigtail is pulled off the plug before you start putting your hands under the deck, unless you want a new nickname: "Lefty". Make sure the pigtail is nowhere near the plug. I'm assuming you have a standard lawnmower, mine is a self-propelled with a Briggs & Stratton engine, but the same principles apply if you have a Tecumseh or whatever. Tip her on her side and let the handle rest on something solid. Make sure it's not going to fall over on you. (From here on I'm going to assume common sense.) I don't have everything in place because there are steps I follow in changing the oil. Do the oil second, after the blade, especially if you haven't run the mower to warm up the oil. Find a socket that fits the blade bolt (the metal thing over or under the blade is called the blade clutch), and you may have to horse it off or spray it with WD-40. Oil change. There's an oil plug close to the blade clutch on the sump underside. You may have to clean the area to find it. My Briggs uses a 3/8" square holed plug. Your 3/8" extender should fit. Position a drain pain under the mower. `Lefty loosey. (This isn't an AK-47 muzzle thread.) `Right is tight, lefties are loose.' When you get the plug out, lower the mower. Now, go find a spark plug socket that fits your spark plug. (After you're done, label it, 'mower socket' so you don't spend 15 minutes next year finding one that fits.) Put the socket securely on the plug and hit the socket driver with the heel of your hand. Stick the plug in your shirt pocket. After the oil drains, make sure the oil plug is clean along with the area around the drain hole and hand start it. Just snug it up, no need to horse it on. Your engine housing is probably soft aluminum. Add a little 10W-30 weight oil. If all you have is left over 10W-40 from your car, that's better than nothing but it was designed for cold weather. Look at the little CJ8 plug to make sure it's not burned. Prolly easier to just replace it, but I use a brush on mind and make sure the gap is OK (.30), and then put compressed air in it to make sure nothing but the business-end of the plug is going into the combustion chamber All right back to the mower blade. Take the blade either to your grinder or where you plan to file it. Wear gloves. Scrape off the dried grass crust with a screwdriver or putty knife. There's no need to put a razor edge on it. That will just curl under with time. Try to center it on something thin to see if it balances. You left the spark plug unhooked, right? Hand-tighten the blade bolt. (Is the shiny side of the blade `up'? Is it secured correctly to the blade clutch?) Almost there. Check your oil, add a little more. Next, take out your accordion fan air filter. If it's in bad shape, replace it. Otherwise give it a good cleaning with an air gun or soft brush and put it back in the air filter housing. Add more oil carefully up to the mark. If you over-fill and don't have a suction gun, you get to repeat removing the drain plug. Your little engine is air cooled and depends on enough clean oil so it doesn't meld it's piston rings to the cylinder wall, an ugly thing to see. Hand screw your new, cleaned, correctly gapped--you can get a plug keychain spark plug gapper for about a buck at the Advance Auto counter--spark plug into the cylinder head (spark plug hole). Again, there's no need to horse it. Just hand tight, then snug it up. The cylinder head is also aluminum. Push the pigtail firmly onto the spark plug. Add fresh 87 grade gas. Especially if you left her out for Old Man Winter to ravage you filthy swine! Or you forgot to add Stabil to the gas tank or to run it until it ran out of gas. If not, try to get that gas out before adding new. If you have a primer give it a couple more pumps than you do when you're wearing a tank top this summer. Here we are: pull on her tail. Mine started first time, HA! No go? Problems in starting are usually 90% fuel. If you can see spark between the plug electrodes. the problem is fuel. You can try taking the filter out and dripping gas into the carburetor. (Pull the plug) If that starts it, it may try to die so keep priming until it is running regular and let it run until it flushes out what may be fuel gums that were blocking your fuel line or carb orifices. Still won't run? This is mower maintenance, not repair but I'll check back in a while to see if there are any questions or comments. And I hope this is helpful to those of you, like me, who mow your own dam lawn.
My old lawn-boy would not start last summer when I got back to the Phoenix Valley. Since my “lawn” is eight feet by twenty-four feet, I decided I was done with pull starters and tune ups for the rest of my life and got an electric mower.
Clean under the deck, sharpen the blade every two years I imagine and I am good-to-go, I am very happy that it starts when I push the button and squeeze the handle.
I think I am going to take my rototiller to my son in Michigan. They have gardens and such up there. Down here, we have cactus and weeds that are so tough you have to burn them out.
Yikes, you’re correct, “ceck” is a horrific typo, I blame it on posting with my fat thumbs on a small phone.
But rest of the text is on me. No excuses. English is my second language, Japanese is my third. Although I use English for the 2/3 of life, I do not have mastery over it as if it was my mother tongue.
Thanks for the tip, I’ll try them all out.
2/3 of “my life”. No editing on posts means I have to pay attention to detail (or post less).
I had an old Montgomery Ward lawnmower I purchased in like 1989. It had a Briggs and Stratton Quantum engine that refused to die. I was still using that mower as recently as 2012. About that time, after cutting the grass I was hosing it off and the young man who cuts grass for some people in the neighborhood came by. I guess he’s something of a “lawn mower connoisseur.” He said he’d seen photographs of my mower, but had never seen one that was actually in running condition. He had the expression of someone who stumbled across an actual working Tiger tank (yes, I know; there is actually one of them in the world).
I tried to sell it to him, but he said his mom would kill him, he already had too many. Too bad; Mrs. henkster hated that mower and wanted it gone.
I never post. It’s much better to sit back and take pot shots at other posts.
You have gotten many good suggestions to investigate.
Just want you to make sure clutch, (if not hydrostatic drive)/ brake pedal is depressed while cranking. It should have a safety switch also that may fail.
Good luck and let us know how you do.
LOL
Make certain both battery cables are tight on the battery posts. I can’t tell you how many times this occured to me and I thought something major was wrong.
“No need to remove the drain plug under the mower to drain out old oil. Modern mowers (for over 20 years) are designed to drain oil without removing the drain plug.”
If you say so. Mine is less than twenty years old and has a drain plug.
“Also, advise you not to use fuel with ethanol in mowers. Ethanol makes fuel lines brittle and damages jets and diaphragms in the carburetor.”
I believe you’ve confused ethanol with methanol or wood alcohol. It will eat rubber gaskets and other stuff, stuff like Brawndo that your mower craves, and it will make you blind. So I drink it only on days ending with a `y’.
N/P
“Warning ... “ Good advice. I do.
N/P
How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It’s incredibly obvious, isn’t it? A foreign substance is introduced into our fuel supply without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. That’s the way your hard-core Commie works.
Yeah, you’re right. That car starter stuff is ether, isn’t it? Highly combustible.
It’s why I never loan my truck, my chainsaw or my wife: you can bet some SOB will throw a rod in any one of them.
To keep your lawn mower or snow blower in good running condition takes care for the off season. When you put your small engine away drain as much gas as possible and then run the engine until it quits. This gets gas out of the carburetor. Then change the oil, remove the spark plug and give a shot of WD40 in the cylinder before replacing the plug. I followed this routine for years and never had a problem starting the engine the next season. Of course change filters and do clean up as needed. A little Triflow or similar spray lube on the cables and you are set to go.
Promise me you’ll look forward to my 2026 Post:
It’s a Cookbook: `How I Survived the Zombie Apocalypse, Then The Kanamits.’
“Prestone starter spray. Get it.”
Gas is a gas, man.
The angry man said, “You promised me this Stihl would cut a cord of wood an hour. I cut all day and barely got a rick!”
So I flipped the switch, pulled on her tail, the chainsaw fired up and the professor said,
“What the **** is all that blasted noise?”
“kill switches on riding mowers”
You reminded me about the riding mower. There may be a safety interlock. Like a car where you have to have your foot on the brake or push a button by the steering wheel, you may have to be sitting in the seat for it to start.
Series.
I disconnected the blade brake on my mower. The CPSC sue me.
But I ain't like that happy feller John Ritter. No sir.
Sorry “Tumblin’”...had to do it as a reformatted “repost”:
Posted on March 29, 2016 at 1:41:46 PM PDT by tumblindice
Spring has sprung, the grass has riz, I wonder where my flowers is. There aren’t any because I was too lazy to plant bulbs. I’ve been here ten years and decided maybe it was time to post a thread.
And that some of you might be able to use my five years experience working in a small engine repair shop. I just gave mine the spring thing, and am smelling faintly now of the tang of gasoline.
OK, there’s your lawnmower in your garage, shed, barn—or maybe you left her with gas in the tank sitting out in the freezing rain and snow all winter. (You may have a problem later.) First make sure she’s not loade—I mean, make sure the spark plug pigtail is pulled off the plug before you start putting your hands under the deck, unless you want a new nickname: “Lefty”.
Make sure the pigtail is nowhere near the plug. I’m assuming you have a standard lawnmower, mine is a self-propelled with a Briggs & Stratton engine, but the same principles apply if you have a Tecumseh or whatever.
Tip her on her side and let the handle rest on something solid. Make sure it’s not going to fall over on you. (From here on I’m going to assume common sense.) I don’t have everything in place because there are steps I follow in changing the oil. Do the oil second, after the blade, especially if you haven’t run the mower to warm up the oil. Find a socket that fits the blade bolt (the metal thing over or under the blade is called the blade clutch), and you may have to horse it off or spray it with WD-40. Oil change.
There’s an oil plug close to the blade clutch on the sump underside. You may have to clean the area to find it. My Briggs uses a 3/8” square holed plug. Your 3/8” extender should fit. Position a drain pain under the mower. `Lefty loosey. (This isn’t an AK-47 muzzle thread.) `Right is tight, lefties are loose.’ When you get the plug out, lower the mower.
Now, go find a spark plug socket that fits your spark plug. (After you’re done, label it, ‘mower socket’ so you don’t spend 15 minutes next year finding one that fits.) Put the socket securely on the plug and hit the socket driver with the heel of your hand. Stick the plug in your shirt pocket.
After the oil drains, make sure the oil plug is clean along with the area around the drain hole and hand start it. Just snug it up, no need to horse it on. Your engine housing is probably soft aluminum. Add a little 10W-30 weight oil. If all you have is left over 10W-40 from your car, that’s better than nothing but it was designed for cold weather.
Look at the little CJ8 plug to make sure it’s not burned. Prolly easier to just replace it, but I use a brush on mind and make sure the gap is OK (.30), and then put compressed air in it to make sure nothing but the business-end of the plug is going into the combustion chamber All right back to the mower blade.
Take the blade either to your grinder or where you plan to file it. Wear gloves. Scrape off the dried grass crust with a screwdriver or putty knife. There’s no need to put a razor edge on it. That will just curl under with time. Try to center it on something thin to see if it balances. You left the spark plug unhooked, right? Hand-tighten the blade bolt. (Is the shiny side of the blade `up’? Is it secured correctly to the blade clutch?)
Almost there. Check your oil, add a little more.
Next, take out your accordion fan air filter. If it’s in bad shape, replace it. Otherwise give it a good cleaning with an air gun or soft brush and put it back in the air filter housing. Add more oil carefully up to the mark. If you over-fill and don’t have a suction gun, you get to repeat removing the drain plug. Your little engine is air cooled and depends on enough clean oil so it doesn’t meld it’s piston rings to the cylinder wall, an ugly thing to see.
Hand screw your new, cleaned, correctly gapped—you can get a plug keychain spark plug gapper for about a buck at the Advance Auto counter—spark plug into the cylinder head (spark plug hole). Again, there’s no need to horse it. Just hand tight, then snug it up. The cylinder head is also aluminum.
Push the pigtail firmly onto the spark plug.
Add fresh 87 grade gas. Especially if you left her out for Old Man Winter to ravage you filthy swine! Or you forgot to add Stabil to the gas tank or to run it until it ran out of gas. If not, try to get that gas out before adding new. If you have a primer give it a couple more pumps than you do when you’re wearing a tank top this summer. Here we are: pull on her tail. Mine started first time, HA!
No go?
Problems in starting are usually 90% fuel. If you can see spark between the plug electrodes. the problem is fuel. You can try taking the filter out and dripping gas into the carburetor. (Pull the plug) If that starts it, it may try to die so keep priming until it is running regular and let it run until it flushes out what may be fuel gums that were blocking your fuel line or carb orifices.
Still won’t run? This is mower maintenance, not repair but I’ll check back in a while to see if there are any questions or comments. And I hope this is helpful to those of you, like me, who mow your own dam lawn.
“My old lawn-boy” Was it old enough to have centrifugal governor weights? Those things were a beeyotch to adjust.
We even worked on old boys with points and condensors.
I mowed my grandpappy’s yard with an electric mower back in `63. But it was corded. He had also converted his truck to natural gas.
Yours is battery electric I’m guessing.
I’m trying to remember the top rototiller. I don’t think it was Troybilt, though they make a good one. Some of them are like trying to ride a bull.
We sold Deere Johns. That green was expensive. And prolly still is.
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