Greetings from KY, the Bluegrass State

[Homer1]

Hi there, happy to be aboard.

I am currently a residential mower with a green thumb so to say. I take pride in my yard and yard work, and try to help others succeed in theirs not only through advice or sharing information but also gardening techniques. I enjoy gardening and growing good organic food to put back for our winter months, reducing trips to the grocery store for that awful California stuff. There are many like me here!

I currently enjoy mowing with my 1889 John Deere 285 garden tractor, which can be considered an antique at this point. It still has it's original heavy steel stamped deck, but an upgraded air cooled engine. It has been a joy to help keep up a classic mower which is pretty much built like a rock. However that being said, I have decided to move it to our 2nd property location and invest in a ZTR for my home, which is what brought me here.

After the JD engine (Kawasaki FD590V) liquid cooled engine kicked the dust on me sometime last year, I decided to upgrade to a plug-and-play model which was on the market, the Briggs and Stratton Platinum series single piston 21HP air cooled engine, with a Craftsman branding sticker on it. So far it's been a good upgrade, or trade-out I should say as the Kawasaki was fantastic. After the engine broke down I decided I would dissect it, and learn about the small engine. In doing so I was able to find the issues that caused it to die, as well as clean up the good parts and sell them through auction sites to recoup the money for the upgrade, coming out in the end even, maybe even slightly ahead.

If you have never been inside of a small engine, it's worth a try. Find an old junker and just go through it. You will learn a lot in the process which could keep you out of the shop with the help of some decent tools and a good YouTube how-to.

Anyway, me in a nutshell. Hope to share some worthwhile info in the future.

Homer

 

[DaveTN]

Hi Homer! Welcome to LMF. Lots of interesting things to see and learn on here.
It can be fun to tear an old engine apart, even a small 3 hp push mower. I felt
like tinkering with a 3.5 B&S carb-on-tank couple of days ago, a mower that my
cousin gave me. Had a stuck valve, thus no compression, and the primer squirt
bulb wasn't working. I cleaned the valve and got it freed up. Then decided to
see if I could fix, rather than replace, the primer bulb which seemed to be OK.
The trouble was the checkball was rusty and not seating, thus not letting it squirt
gas or even hold gas in the bulb when I pumped it. Pulled out the rubber seat and
rolled the ball around on a piece of fine sandpaper and cleaned it up, popped it back
in and now it starts on the first pull. I worked on my first Kohler Courage bucket engine
back in June and it was a problem child. The Courage has the type of engine with
access plate on top and learned a little. Always some "first" coming down the pike if
you hang around long enough! :laughing:

 

[Catherine]

Hi and welcome to the forum, Homer! :welcome:
I think I've learned the most from dissecting (and sometimes even managing to fix) broken machines.