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.
Like assaulted Planters peanut?
Our mower repairman died. (Seriously.) We bought a new mower.
No need for the < p> symbol as long as you don’t use any other HTML in your post. Just a space will separate paragraphs nicely.
Good on you. FWIW, PRI-G is an industrial grade stabilizer. You can keep gasoline for years.
OK!!!! Phew, that was tough. I did run a bunch of old fuel out of genny tank. All went well BTW.
Unfortunately, most HSs don’t offer shop any more. Pitiful! Raising a generation of dependents.
Last weekend I broke out the mower; standard spring maintenance. Sharpened the blade on the grinder, cleaned the deck, changed the oil and the air filter, ran some Gumout through the air intake, and we are ready to go.
Cut the grass, first time. I already put the crabgrass preventer/fertilizer down two or three weeks earlier. Only got two bags of clippings, even with pulling the last of the stray leaves out of the flower beds.
It was good to get out and do some yardening. And we broke out the grill for some burgers, brats and beers for the 1st Q of spring, too!
Now we just need some Cub games on the TV in the garage....
The starter won’t make the jump to engage the flywheel? Nothing?
Use a large standard screwdriver and see if you can turn the flywheel manually.
Did the Bermuda grass scalp last week...
Yeah, I’ve got to get dinner started. Will check back later.
One reason I posted, I got in a hurry years ago and stripped plug threads on a nice little Troybilt pushmower once. Ouch.
You should "ceck" your ability to write English.
I'm betting there is something in the book that came
with your mower that you didn't read or didn't understand
just based upon how you handle the language of the land.
Like maybe "add gas" or something complicated like that.
Are you actually permitted around power tools?
A warning and a correction (correction makes changing oil easier).
Warning.....When tipping mower over to service blade never tip it over with the carburetor down. If you do and it is on its side for a while oil will drip onto the air filter an ruin it. Always tip a mower over with the carburetor up.
Correction....Make it easier on yourself. 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. The oil fill tube acts as a spout when mower is on its side. Just tip the mower all the way over on the side of the oil fill tube and all oil drains out without removing the 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. Find a station with non ethanol fuel to fill up the gas can you use to fill the mower with.
Ethanol is a death sentence to small engines.
Since the birth of pre package Eth Free 2 and 4 Cycle gas.
My spring problems are gone.
Trick for me is run em dry with the Eth free before putting them to bed in the Fall.
Saw and Spliiter gets it all winter.
Use WD-40 for starter fluid, never use starting fluid. Starting fluid burns too hot and can damage the rings. WD-40 is what they teach mechanics to use in small engine school.
I’ve been here ten years and decided maybe it was time to post a thread.
________________________________________
lolol
I hereby sentence you to ten more years before you post a thread again.
Welcome to the wall of text posts.
Call Jose
Nutsedge and thistle.
Use “ethanol shield” instead.
Sta-bil can be iffy.
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