Spring Lawn Mower Maintenance

[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.

[Justa]

I do the exact same thing with my Sears DLT3000 lawn “tractor” lol. I use either a broken off golf club or a machete to jump it. Works great.

[BuckeyeTexan]

What an incredibly helpful thread, Darlin’!

I did something S.T.U.P.I.D. with my lawn tractor. May ask you some questions and get your opinion/advice on a repair issue?

BT

[IamConservative]

Humorous, but one quibble. A lot of small engines don’t really like the multi viscosity oils. Regular SAE30 usually results in less smoke and less oil consumption. Certainly use what your manuals say, but, if you have one smoking, using oil and/or fouling plugs, try SAE30.