Lawn-Boy 7268 Restomod Odyssey - Grab some popcorn and your favorite beverage!

[FuzzyDriver]

You sure know how to paint a sad picture, Bert. How much do you think a Lawn-Boy would go for today if it was a REAL Lawn-Boy, like the ones we use?

 

[tom3]

If made in China, FOB west coast for about 30 dollars. Sell in Walmart/Amazon for 249.95. Good luck with warranty or service - or any concern whatsoever for your problem. That's today's marketplace.

 

[bertsmobile1]

You sure know how to paint a sad picture, Bert. How much do you think a Lawn-Boy would go for today if it was a REAL Lawn-Boy, like the ones we use?

I would be about the same price as the Hondas and no one would buy them.
The biggest selling push mower dow here was the Victa 18" fited with the power torq 2 stroke engine with over 40% of all sales.
Tier II pollution laws were coming in so Victa had NSWIT doing prototypeing of an tier II compliant engine.
B& S bought Victa when they defaulted on their loan & breeched he loan agreement .
Briggs obviously wanted to fit Chinese B &S engines to make the highest profit & recoup the losses so they added a "research bounty" to the price of he 2 stroke engine.
Thus it went from being the cheapest , around $ 300 in the range to the dearest $ 700 and the sales dropped to next to zero so they got approval to close down the engine plant .
It all comes down to ignorance , price & greed.
And Lawn Boy in the USA would suffer the same fate even if they could have made a TIER IV compliant two stroke engine .
Capatialism requires a few basic things to work
1) the market must be informed, so the customers need to have the capacity to determine the quality , durability & operating costs of the mowers
2) a competative market with no single dominant player in either retail wholesale or manufacturing .
3) retailers & factories that are in competition with each other & not part of cartels ( basis of your anti-trust laws ) .

None of these exist anywhere except in the stock market

 

[FuzzyDriver]

Bert: Didn't realize you weren't in the US. Where are you, Oz?

 

[bertsmobile1]

Workshop is on a friends farm on the rural outskirts of Sydney which is rapidly becoming large rural / residential
House is in the mountains .
When they changed the format we lost the location which is a problem because every one thinks all participants are in the USA
So they advise people in Ireland to go to HF & get a leak down tester which ain't going to happen.

 

[FuzzyDriver]

Haven't been to that side. I've been to Perth twice. About ready for spring? G'day!

 

[bertsmobile1]

Spring was over a month ago when we got rain.
The 4 seasons mean nothing down there.
The local Black fellars had 9 for this region, but not for every year .
Then what would they know, they have only been here for 80,000 years watching what happens.
Obviously an overweight European with a toe in the Medeterranian must know better because he could write.
Already eating new season early tomatoes & still have last seasons tomatoes.
The reason we have devistating bushfires is because we will not listen to the black fellars and I imagine that is a big part of your chronic bushfire as well
Again what would the natives know about not being burned alive ?

Not been to the West coast yet
There is a West -East cannonball ride planned for vintage motorcycles in a couple of years and that will be the first time.
Been no further than Wyhalla & Port Perrie in SA

 

[FuzzyDriver]

Interesting that your growing seasons don't match up well with the equinoxes.

I haven't been to Perth (or Fremantle, that's where we were tied up) in a looong time. I liked Australia. One of the few places an American could move to and not experience culture shock (except driving on the wrong side of the road, heh! I was the designated driver!) What are the start and finish points of your Cannonball ride?

 

[bertsmobile1]

Basically Perth to Eden .
Naturally the exact places are secret til there is money in the bank but the proposed route was published last year for pre 1945 motorcycles.

Spring Summer Autum & Winter are only accurate in a very small lattitude band in Europe and a smaller one in the America's .
We hang on to them because our feedbele white brains can not accept that the coloured people who actually lived outside Europe might actually be right and the Greek/Roman philosophers might have been wrong .
Remember both your & my country base our entire legal , political & moral system on the Greeko-Romans , so they have to be right .
The Chinese do not tradtionally recognise the 4 seasons & neither do the Indians (Hindu & Muselum ones ) .
Not up on South American culture but fairly sure none of the Inuits, Aztecs , Inkas or Mayans used a 4 season year either .

The best we white folk ever got was Old Moores Almanac who used the 4 seasons, transposed with moon phases to predict plantings & harvests so as not to scare the horses & put himself above the Holy Word .

For example the coldest winter night we had this year was + 2 deg C so there will be little to no cherries , pears or appricots this season in the orchard but there should be a bumper olive season .
Even you must have noticed that some years you barely stop mowing while others it was hardly worth changing the oil you mowed so little .

 

[FuzzyDriver]

The defined Spring, Summer, Autumn, & Winter seasons aren't based on when anyone experiences annual changes. These seasons are based on where the Earth is around the Sun. So everywhere on Earth has this particular set of seasons, with the Southern hemisphere obviously seeing the opposite of the Northern hemisphere. But I understand what you are saying. "Season" has lots of meanings. Rugby season. Planting season. Baseball season. Harvest. None of them are necessarily fixed with respect to the equinoxes/solstices. For that reason there's no reason there has to be a particular count of annual seasons, or fixed length of each one. There's dozens of sets of seasons, I expect.

That ride is way over 2,000 miles. And there's lots of wilderness. Vintage bikes. There HAS to be a bunch of safety vehicles follow you all, right?