My Lawn Mower Repair Thread (56k warning)

[hanyoukimura]

I got the silver mower running. As I suspected, the carburetor was full of nasty stuff and had some corrosion on it. No way it ran within the last year or two. Small wonder it didn't leak gas everywhere since the fuel line was so rotted.

One of the problems I ran into with this one was that there was a blockage behind the seat. The seat itself was in bad shape and fell apart when I tried to remove it. I had no spares on hand, so I swapped carburetors with another engine that needs a base.

Despite the intake gasket having broken in two, i managed to salvage it and it primes well.

Unfortunately, while the recoil spring hadn't broken whenever the rope initially did, it was apparently severely weakened, and broke on me while attempting to start the mower. I did happen to have a brand new assembly on hand, but the guy wants it done so he can resell the mower and therefore doesn't want to spend a lot. To that end I yanked the shroud/recoil from the same engine I took the carburetor from, and eventually it'll get that new recoil.

With everything back together...again, it starts up and runs well. He can deal with the air filter, oil, and spark plug. To get it running will probably cost about $35

I had some daylight left to work with, so I attempted to get the green mower running. The carburetor was actually not bad at all, although the bowl had corrosion where it meats the gasket. I replaced the bowl and gasket, cleaned the carburetor up, and put it back together. My reward? A very hard to pull engine. It pulls fine with no spark lug, but with the plug in it gets to a point where it doesn't want to turn unless I really pull. It may have yanked back once, but that may have also been me running out of rope. I did check the flywheel key. It's one of those L shaped ones. It didn't look like it was off by much, if at all. Not sure about this one. It's bale cable is pretty shot, but I think moves enough to work. If I can get the engine running, it'll need to be replaced.

Finally, I looked over the Craftsman I got. First impressions: needs a recoil as well. I don't know what it is lately with these mowers. Luckily, I have several spare Tecumseh ones. The deck looks solid enough but its not showroom fresh. There's paint bubbling and some rust showing through. It has electric start, which is neat. Battery is dead of course. Bale cable my stretched as well. Not sure yet.

 

[hanyoukimura]

Everything went better than expected.

I made some progress with the Yard Man. I looked at its flywheel again and compared it to a parts Tecumseh with the same key design.

The Yard Man:

The other engine:

Its not a lot, but its definitely off. Perhaps enough to throw the timing off, and this is why its so hard to pull? I'm going to get a new key for it and replace it. Certainly can't hurt to dry.

With nothing left to do with the Yard Man for now,I decided to tackle the Craftsman I picked up. Sorry no before pictures, but the rundown is this: recoil spring broken, no gas in tank but I could smell bad gas, covered in leaves.

Things got off to a bad start when I replaced the recoil with the one from the silver Craftsman I recently scrapped. The recoil itself went on fine, and this mower has the same handlebar design, so there was a hole in the middle of the handlebar for the bracket.

However it quickly went downhill when I pulled the spark plug out and gave it a pull. It burped out a nasty brown liquid that I couldn't tell was gas or water. When I removed the muffler and the carburetor, some of the same liquid came out.

I was afraid this was going to be a junk engine, but it spun freely so I decided to proceed anyway. The tank was empty, but the carburetor has...something...still in it.

It smelled aweful! this gas was really old.

Wanted to quickly see if this would even run, I yanked the carburetor I had just cleaned up yesterday for the Yard Man and put it on the Craftsman. Hooked it all up, replaced the plug, checked the oil, which actually wasn't bad at all, and prepared for the moment of truth. To my surprise, in two pulls it was running and running really well! I had expected smoke or something to come out of the exhaust but not smoke to be seen. Somehow this engine runs perfectly, and the drive system works too! That made my evening. I'll need to sharpen the blade and change the oil, but this one's a runner. Cosmetically, the paint is bubbling around the belt cover and there's some surface rust, but its solid overall. When its all done it'll list for less than the Rally.

Here it is washed off an back together. I'll do what I can with the existing paint later, but its not being repainted.

With it in good running order, I decided to keep the borrowed carburetor on it, and put its on the Yard Man.

While I deemed the bowl and float a loss, I got lucky in that there wasn't much fuel in the bowl, so there was only some green staining on the bottom of carburetor itself. I wire brushed it and the jet off, cleaned it really good, and replaced the missing primer bulb.

It could almost pass for new now!

 

[mmanter]

What did you do to get that carb so clean?

 

[hanyoukimura]

What did you do to get that carb so clean?

Carb spray for all the grime and then gently brushing it with a wire wheel.

The Rally is gone. Sold for a cool $175+15 for delivery. I don't normally deliver, especially since it was 50 minutes away, but they were willing to pay the asking price and offered to pay for delivery. $15 covered gas and it was a very nice drive through the countryside on a beautiful late afternoon, so its all good. I showed them how to use the mower, how to take care of it, etc. They seemed happy with it, and should give them years of service. I included both the mulch plug and bag that came with the Craftsman, which I kind of regret since the Craftsman now runs but needs one or the other to be ready to sell.

Today I cleaned the Craftsman up further. Its paint really isn't in great shape, so I went easy on it. Wish getting a hold of touch-up paint wasn't so hard or I'd do something. but I really don't want to take it all apart and repaint it.

My shiny brand-new engine cover came in for the Husky. Makes a world a difference. Used 3M Lens and Hard Plastic cleaner to bring some shiny back to the deck. Came out pretty good! This one's about ready to go, it's going to be sold as a push mower. Runs great and works great as is, now it looks presentable.

Finally, I stayed out after dark to fiddle with the Yard Man. Replaced the flywheel key and installed a carburetor. The good new is it started, but it died after a few seconds, so there's still some work to be done. Still, we're at the point where the mower starts up now, so that's good progress.

 

[Vervepipes]

Looks nice!

 

[hanyoukimura]

Looks nice!

Thanks! It cleaned up pretty well. I used that same plastic cleaner on my HRB215. That stuff works awesome on hard plastic, and the brand new engine cover really makes a difference.

Last night when I was trying to get the Yard Man back together to see if it would run I ran into a problem. I put that shiny clean carburetor on, attached the fuel line and put gas in. It did fire up then die out, but it also started dripping gas out of the carburetor. I've come across this before and checked the float, which was at the correct height. I check the seat and pin which looked fine. I could not get this thing to stop leaking. I swapped out floats, swapped out seats, still leaking gas and I'm not sure why. This is the carburetor for the Craftsman, and I remember my neighbor said it was flooding the last time h tried to use it. That's what all of the fluid was in the cylinder. It had flooded, and gas spilled over and leaking down the intake manifold right into the cylinder.

I ran out of daylight so I built another carburetor to see if that would get it to run. No more fuel leak although it didn't want to stay running. I had wanted to work on it today, but weather was not on my side.

I'm pretty bummed about my bag situation. I took a shot and stopped by a place that also fixes and sells mowers. He had quite a few bags but nothing to fit the Craftsman, all newer or older style. I need to hunt one down so I can get it listed. I might break down and buy a new mulch plug and sell it as a mulcher.

 

[primerbulb120]

Bagging must be more popular in your area than mulching. In my area, I hardly ever see anyone using a walk-behind mower with a bagger.

 

[hanyoukimura]

Bagging must be more popular in your area than mulching. In my area, I hardly ever see anyone using a walk-behind mower with a bagger.

It really seems to be. I prefer mulching myself. I only use the bag for leaves.

 

[mmanter]

I know on my 5 yr old Craftsman I got a bagger but only because my yard sometimes grows like mad & needs bagged up instead of mulching. This year I haven't bagged once so the bag sits in the garage

 

[hanyoukimura]

originally I was to have the whole afternoon off, but got held up until 3pm. Still, I made some good progress.

After striking out finding a bag from another guy who fixes mowers, I tried one more local place. There's an auto salvage yard that also has some lawn mowers and a couple snowblowers. I found a gas tank for a mower I'll get to further down, and I snagged those big metal wing nuts from the handlebar of a very old Craftsman model 921321 to put on the Grand Prix. Its been there for some time and I kind of want it, but I don't know how solid the deck is and I'm not sure if I have the time to work on a project like that. Plus the engine is totally junk.

There were a couple of bags on the mowers, but not what I needed. By chance, I asked if he had anything else. He went over to a junked box truck and opened it up. Pay dirt! Just what I needed. Even cooler though was an aluminum deck Snapper with a Tecumseh 2-cycle engine! Really cool and in very good shape by the looks of it...and also not for sale.

With gas tank acquired I went and picked up the other mower that the auto shop wanted fixed. Remember how I'd tell the story of where the Yard Man's fuel tank ended up? Here it is. This is something else.

At a glance it looks like the tank is just sitting there on the deck. No big deal. However, closer inspection reveals the scope of the redneck engineering that's gone on here.

Apparently, the original tank had a leak, so they tried to rig up the tank from the Yard Man. For reasons I can't begin to fathom, they cut the entire bottom of the original tank off, then zip tied the two tanks together. To top it all off, it had 2 feet of 3/8 hose clamped down over the tank can carburetor nipples.

Fortunately, the Yard Man's tank was not maimed during this operation.

Removing the carburetor revealed some very old gas that had collected in the bowl.

I cleaned it up as best I could.

Unhappily, the gasket that seals the air filter housing to the carburetor was totally junk, as was the bowl gasket. I got super lucky and had a brand new on hand. I had ordered two some time ago, one for an engine I was working on, and one for spare. Glad I did!

With the machine all back together, I couldn't get it to start. Shot some carb spray in the carburetor, no luck. Then I realized I had forgotten to put the wire back on the spark plug! Silly me! It fired right up after that. I'll need to cold start it to be sure its fixed, but otherwise it runs great.

Meanwhile, I found another loose engine mounting bolt. Had the bolts been head heats it wouldn't have been necessary, but because they were internal torx bolts with round heads, there was no way to grab them from the side. I had no choice but to remove the engine mounting bracket. Just my luck, one of those bolts sheered off, but I was able to remove it. Here's a couple photos of this wacky deck and the odd blade adapter.

Its all back together now. Blade is sharp and oil is changed. It's officially ready for sale.

Tomorrow, I'll change the oil on the Craftsman and sharpen its blade, then it will be ready for sale unless I decide to repaint it, but ehh...

I also will try to get the Yard Man running properly.