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The most surefire way to test a coil is to take the shroud off to get to it and unhook the small push on wire from it which is the kill switch. Note that this disables always of turning off the engine so if it does start be ready with a glove or a towel to pull the coil wire off the plug to stop...

Yes! The experience is worth a whole lot.. Just make sure you remember all that for next time you have a problem with something because many people don't and they just start replacing things. Lol I personally despise YouTube videos because about 90% of them do things either the hard way or the...

Toro actually does one of the better jobs of the residential grade ZTRs out there. They also seem to have some of the highest blade speed I've seen for residential mowers or maybe it's just deck design but they have a lot of vacuum and noise and do a very good job of being powerful and cutting...

About the only purpose removing both cables can do is the fact that it gives you a chance to inspect both cables for corrosion and taking them apart and putting them back on is liable too knock some corrosion off if there's any there and make a better connection than if it just sat there forever...

This is exactly why people really need to focus on the diagnostic skills when there is a problem with a piece of equipment. All too often people end up trying this or trying that which is basically throwing parts at a piece of equipment and typically on the 3rd or 4th time they luck out and get...

Not necessary at all for the gas. Riders are much more forgiving than smaller engine push mowers. I have found is better to store them full of fresh stabilized fuel than to run them dry as it's better for rubber parts and inlet needle valve in carb. Just don't use old gas that you've had in...

Have to be careful how we state the things about Toro and lawn tractors... While it is true that Toro does not currently (and hasn't for some time) their own lawn tractor style mowers BUT they do make all of their zero turns and there walk behind mowers. We're not really talking about the 21 and...

To be honest, if I were the neighbor to the OP and we had identical lots. He could go out and buy whichever new one he wanted and I can get on Craigslist or market price and buy a used 42 or 48-in rider. We could go 15 years or 20 into the future if you want to and I very well might be on my...

I've cut 48-in deck riding lawn mowers in a standard Chevy 8-ft pickup bed many times. It's not convenient and you have to pull the deck up above one side onto the wheel well but it can be done.

A classic example of making something over complicated that didn't need to be that way. We turn these mowers into a complicated bi-directional computer system a fuel management etc which makes them far harder to troubleshoot and makes the parts far more expensive and more of them. I'll pass. I...

The prices of batteries are going absolutely the wrong way of what the market should be doing but that must just be greed. Instead of getting a replacement battery for a walk behind mower for 50 to 80 bucks they are now at least $150 if not 250. I don't ever want to have any of the battery...

This is for experience and seeing thousands of plugs comes in. You described the plugs as being wet and dark but ever used plug that comes out of a mower is dark if not black and wet is a matter of opinion. It obviously wasn't actually wet or not wet enough and not fouled or it wouldn't have run...

Also, I have to laugh at your last line about the future is here. Like battery powered or electric mowers and or tools are anything new. Same with cars as we're on about the fourth rendition of battery powered cars in this world. Lol In fact, a friend of mine had a Black & Decker battery...

I was also correct with everything else I stated. Lol Correct for now because I used words like "currently". You have to watch statistics and numbers and see exactly what number you're looking at because while your stated number of 25% of annual push more sales quite accurate (and in fact the...

Only a fairly small percentage of people in many parts are even most parts of the country have taken the plunge or chance let's say with a battery powered mower. Just wait until it becomes more and more mainstream with some of these stupid stores actually pushing it and giving numbers and dates...

I am happy to see that there are better frame options out there in battery mowers than the flimsy plastic stuff and wimpy blades the early ones were and many still are. There is no reason not to have uniformity with the deck, wheels, handle etc. Just swap the engine for the electric motor and...

Man! I see a lot of blind loyalty here or loyalty from previous experiences that is not accurate with the equipment you can buy today. Toro has been my favorite lawn mower company for a long time but that certainly doesn't mean they make the best mowers or that they don't make mistakes etc. The...

You are literally recommending a mower with one of the worst Briggs & Stratton engines ever built! I have already had three or four of these engines self-destruct because the plastic camshaft literally melts and wipes the teeth off of the gear. Now, having said this, they have already revised...

They all pretty much suck for the past 10 years or so...

I think this is what most people do. If they come out in the spring and the mower doesn't start because of what seems to be a week or discharge battery, they choose some method of trying to get it to crank faster. Charging the battery or replace the battery are two common ones. Unfortunately...

Correct, if you go out in the spring and you're mower cranks at normal speed and starts up then the battery is close to fully charged anyways and obviously doing its job so you don't need to put it on any type of additional charger.

Well, manufacturers and some people recommend a lot of things that are unnecessary. Like John Deere in there official service manual tell their techs to do some things at the start of a repair that is simply a waste of time and effort. Lol It gets well below the 30s in my climate with each...

I don't even drain anything. I have had generators sit for 3 years and still start right up and run fine that only had fresh 87 10% ethanol fuel with 1 oz of stable stabilizer per gallon put in them the last time they were used before they were stored. It's a better idea to start them at least...

You can tell yourself that, or think it, or tell as many people as you want but it won't be true. Balancing a 22 inch lawn mower blade on a nail hanging in the wall is more than accurate enough for this type of equipment!!! These mowers are used in often quite poor conditions and abused and the...

Everybody has strong opinions on this and lots of people like to present what they do as fact or the only way to do it or the best way. This is not really the case as there are many ways to obtain the desired results. I would never touch that can fuel because it's ridiculously overpriced I've...

You should always at least try to charge it before replacing it or take it out and take it to one of the auto parts stores and they will test it and charge it and retest it for you. If you do need one though I wouldn't buy one from there because you can usually get them cheaper at Walmart or...

You're going to get a whole lot of opinions on this, even more so than the correct way to sharpen a blade or whether new blades should be sharpened. LOL I have done thousands of these mowers and I can tell you it's irrelevant what the spec is from the factory or what they claim they set them at...

Looks like you have a nice facility. I think you said you've been doing the 16 years. I opened my shop in April of 2011 and currently have 204 reviews. I have no employees as I am a one man show. Your reviews read a lot like mine. Those people say I'm the best thing since sliced bread. More...

Okay but you still didn't answer my question. I was just trying to get your opinion on how many items a year the average mower repair shop does. It's obvious you have a typical average repair shop that's open to the public and not just some guy who happens to work on things 3 or 4 days a week in...

Yes, starting easily and running properly is what the customer is looking for but I have used at least a few but let's just say a handful of these cheap carburetors that did work just fine. I was quite impressed with the one I put on the Kawasaki engine on the John Deere walk behind mower. I was...

Oh, I get it now. You are the one that said in your 16 years you have "never" had an engine run properly with a cheap Chinese junk carburetor. Never is a very specific word. I get it, you were offended that I somehow disagreed with what you said even though I wasn't being critical of you or...

Lol.. "right" is very subjective. I would prefer a shop that gives customers options instead of doing it one way, their way and charging top dollar for it. But I guess everybody does what they want to do. You're going to have to clarify though what caught your attention so much in my post and...

I have been working on these engines a good bit longer than 16 years but started doing it professionally with high volumes of numbers in 2011. I have seen plenty of these cheap Chinese carburetors since then that ran just perfectly. I have seen a lot of problems with the small cube carburetors...

As I mentioned in the post, some commercial mowers did set to 3600 and I've seen some models spec for 3650 or 3700 etc.

I'm not saying it's an epidemic problem or that I've had dozens of them fail but I just don't see how you can keep it entire set if it was your main set you used frequently and not have a socket crack eventually or some plating come off around the tip from constantly putting it on and off of...

I guess for most of your tools that's okay but I don't see how you can go over 15 to 20 years with tools you use a whole lot without damaging one, maybe cracking a socket or at least the Chrome start to flake off or a ratchet mechanism not working anymore properly or slipping. I understand we're...

Well, when it goes up with oil that means your rings aren't sealing properly but before I would trash it since you said you had lots of carbon on it, there's a high degree of likelihood the rings are just coked up in the Piston lands. This was the problem with all the old original Saturn car...

He used to be the case or at least that's what they rated them at and often spec'd them to run but most machines now have been coming lower than that for a couple of decades. 3100 to 3200 is very common and hardly anything goes over 3400. There are a few commercial applications where they...

But highly unlikely if not impossible to happen on a lawn mower. Only the old engines that were horizontally opposed typically had a coil with two wires coming out of it and even then they designed it sometimes so they wouldn't reach to the other plug but in reality it probably wouldn't have...

On the deck problem, I'm not sure what you mean by the stabilizer bar being all the way down unless you're talking about the front one that it hangs from but it seems to me if it's smoking something is either missed routed on the belt or something has too much friction and doesn't want to turn...

See, this is why I was so adamant and repeated myself many times and I tell everyone in this situation too ONLY USE GENUINE MTD BELTS AND ALWAYS REPLACE THEM BOTH AT THE SAME TIME! My exact words are always that if you do not do this you are likely to have a chattery jerky pedal and or speed...

The fact is you can break any socket when you subject it to conditions beyond its design like using a cheater bar on it or using a half inch ratchet with an adapter on a 3/8 drive socket. I have broken a couple of handfuls of sockets over my 40 plus years of using sockets. I do a lot of work...

You are simply wasting your time if you don't put two brand new MTD brand belts on the machine! I have seen too many instances where an old belt looked great but when a new belt was put with it and they were mismatched like that it had a bad chattering or roughness when you tried to smoothly...

I could warranty that ratchet. I guarantee it. Do you have the original receipt? This could actually be the problem. Because the number of the one they scan won't come up with the number you have so you basically need to go over to the tool section and find the ratchet that looks the closest to...

I have been renting on cars for many decades and started on bicycles when I was about 5 years old and then went on to lawn mowers before I got to cars Most of these repairs have been with Craftsman Brand products especially the sockets and ratchets. Most of these of course were made by Danaher...

Yes, most things are up but you jump up to a different tier level when you start getting separate pumps and wheel motors.

Yes. Old school. But you are then limited to just a few high end commercial machines and the prices are really up there.

You can get my with aftermarket on snow blowers and some really old mowers typically older than 1997 and sometimes on Fwd craftsman BUT I will NEVER install a non MTD rider belt on an MTD mower on the double belt drive (double sheave pulley) system OR the deck blade belt. I have personally seen...

I would call that quite a bit of trouble for the mower actually mainly because of the deck. A lot more deck should never have to be replaced! How smart is have a very bad tendency of one of the rear deck supports breaking the weld and falling off of the deck. This is because the bean counters...

Yep, and also using a torque wrench and maybe even the Briggs recommended tightening sequence for the bolts. Those bolts are fairly wimpy so it certainly wouldn't hurt to replace it with new ones and especially much better ones like grade 8. However, a lot of people just use their 3/8 Drive...