smhardesty
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Dec 8, 2022
- Threads
- 25
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- 272
That's funny. I had a couple of similar incidents when I was doing repair before. Nothing quite as bad as that, but still kind of funny. One guy had me come to his house to look at his mower. I had the trailer with me, anticipating having to haul it home for repairs. When I got there, the first thing I noticed was the front yard. It looked kind of like a desert with a few halfway green clumps of grass scattered here and there. The lawn tractor was already out, sitting in the driveway. I got out and he came out of the house to greet me. I decided to play totally dumb until I heard what his complaint was. I'd say it was about the middle of June, if I recall correctly. I asked what I could help him with and he said, as he pointed to the front yard, "There is something really wrong with this thing. Just look at what it did to my yard." So, rather than me jumping right in, I asked him to show me EXACTLY what he does when he mows. So, he climbed on, fired it up, headed to the front yard, then reached over and dropped the deck ALL THE WAY. I was pretty sure I knew what the problem was at that point. I waived him down and when he stopped, I quickly looked at the two, small, cheap, scalp wheels. This was a lower end MTD tractor sold by one of the local farm service stores. When it was assembled in preparation for sale, I'm guessing they had a young kid put it together and he had mounted the wheels in the top mounting hole. Then, when this genius mowed his yard, he dropped the deck all the way and had been danged near scalping the yard every time he mowed. Since it was already June, I asked him when he bought the tractor and turns out he bought it before mowing season started that year. I kind of peaked at the blades and they were about half gone. LOL! So, the first thing I had to do was tell the guy I needed to take it home to fix everything, then when I took it back to him, I had to give a class on how to mow a yard. LOL!
One other incident had me walking a very fine line between resolving a problem, and insulting the guy and his wife. Same deal, I was called to the guy's house to look at what he was calling a factory error type of problem. The mower turned out to be a Yard Bug type mower. It wasn't actually a Yard Bug, but some other brand very similar. I don't even recall what the name was now. It was something that was originally sold by a hardware store in Evansville, IN. I jumped out of the truck and was looking at the mower when the guy came from around the shed. He asked me if I had ever seen a cheap, P.O.S. like that before. What I saw had me stumped for a bit. Those things don't really have a frame under them. The shell is supposed to offer the rigidity needed. As I stood back, looking at it. it was just like looking at a sway back horse. There were wrinkles in the "bug body" and the front of the deck was a few inches closer to the ground than the rear of the deck. I have to admit, that at that particular time, I was almost stumped. I finally laid down on the ground and was checking everything underneath to see if something stuck out. While I was on the ground, I heard a woman's voice. It was the guy's wife, who had come out to see if I had discovered what the problem was. I only heard her at that point. I got up and when I stood up, I was looking at a woman that weighed a MINIMUM of 350 pounds and I'm still betting she was a true 400 pounder. The light came on!!! So, as to be politically correct, I looked at the guy and said, "OK. Could you go ahead and fire it up and make a couple of rounds, just like you would normally do?" As soon as he answered I knew I was right. He said, "Hell, I don't run that thing. That's her job." So, she started towards it and climbed on. You guys just can NOT believe how difficult it was to NOT laugh when she got on that little thing. I swear it looked like she had nothing but a mower deck, a steering wheel, and 4 wheels sticking out of her butt. So, there I was, knowing the reason for the problem, but trying to figure out how to relay that to the guy without completely insulting him and her. I finally handled it by saying, "You know what? The real problem is that this mower is just a really cheap, piece of crap, that has a history with this kind of problem. If I was you, I'd just toss this thing in the trash and go buy a decent mower." I then gave him 4 or 5 different names of mowers I though MIGHT be able to handle a 400 pound wife. LOL!
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