My mower repair thread

[Vervepipes]

The season is about to start, I placed my first add looking for broken mowers and got a reply right away, tomorrow I'm picking up a 6.5HP Craftsman and a 5.5 HP engine that comes with it, no pics, no more info than that. I still have about a dozen basket cases that need to be stripped and sent to the scrap yard for beer money to make room for this season's re-build haul. This year I have an '08 Yaris that I use to commute to save on gas, it has a hitch and in Canada it's rated to tow 700 Lbs, so I'll get a small trailer and use it as my work truck! I have a few mowers that I can build from last year that I need to get done right away to make some cash for the till...

 

[OutdoorEnvy]

I'm finding this thread more entertaining than I probably should, LOL!

Very interesting to follow your progress. Keep up the good work!

 

[Vervepipes]

The mower is a green bodied Craftsman with Tecumseh like I've seen so many of last year, and still have a few left to be processed. The Tecumseh is said to run but seems to be in a few pieces, the engine that came with it as well is a Briggs Quantum, said not to be running, but comes with the cable which I'm always in short supply of. I'll check the Quantum out before saying for sure it doesn't run, I can usually get those going fairly quickly. If I run out of bodies, I may sell just running engines to keep cash flowing. That means I need to build a test stand, maybe a bad mower body with the wheels replaced by feet welded on. Projects for the future...

 

[Lawnboy18]

Good idea on the motor tester

 

[Vervepipes]

A stick got in my spokes yesterday. As it turns out, a deck will not hold against a house if it's only nailed to it with 3" nails. Luckily it didn't completely collapse, but I have extensive repairs that need to be done to it, under the deck also doubles as my storage space. The upper tier of the deck is holding and hasn't seaprated but the lower tier is toast, hopefully it hasn't caused too much damage to the house. I may try to see with the city if there is a contractor listed as having done the work on a permit, but it may not be worth my time and money to go after them. I have no idea how the home inspector missed that before I bought the house... What gets me is that the deck is well built with proper flashing, but the ledger is only nailed on. What a disaster that could have been, I have a 6 seat patio table up there.

This is going to eat at some of my production time, I had intended on building an 8x8 shed to house my ready to sell equipment and a 4x8 shed for my tiller/garden tools as soon as weather permitted. Had to rant, I'm sure others have had shoddily built decks too.

 

[Vervepipes]

I feel like I've lost so much time already this year but this is the first weekend of nice weather we've had. I don't have anything ready to go yet which sucks because there are loads of other guys with tons of listings already. What I have done however is knock down 6 scrap mowers into usable parts to restock my shelves. I think that I can have one, maybe two mowers ready to go this week, we'll see. I also have to start working on my stalled lawn boy project which I stopped about half way through. My old reliable Honda also needs a new recoil. I actually don't even have one mower to be able to do my own yard right now, good thing the grass is only starting to grow.

 

[Lawnboy18]

Looks like you have a lot to do! Might want to take some time off work to take care of the mowers

 

[Vervepipes]

I have a 4 day weekend coming up, that'll help me catch up!

 

[Vervepipes]

I decided the best way to move product would be another shed. I pt up an 8x8 rip stop shed to house some stuff, relieving the overburdened storage problem I had. Today I picked up a plastic bodied Honda Harmony, with the engine and pretty much everything in a box. I'll take a quick look at it, but I think this one will be parted out. The work is already done for me and there are a lot of parts to this jigsaw puzzle to figure out, don't know it's history, I just saw it on the side of the road and couldn't resist. If it's the same engine as my HR194 than I'll see if the starter is any good since my recoil exploded at the end of last season. If the carb is good, it will either eng up on my CHonda I have on a shelf or it'll end up replacing the Mikuni on my project Toro (with a bit of work). Tomorrow I'll try to get even one mower ready for sale to start getting cash flow, then I can buy cheap fixer uppers instead of waiting for freebies to show up.

 

[Vervepipes]

So I started the day finding a suitable engine to throw an a K-Grow deck I have that is in good shape. I decided on a 6HP Tecumseh, it came to life with a new spark plug and a stream of carb cleaner but dies right after the stream is cut off. Typical Tecumseh. While it was running for a few seconds I heard how loud it was and noticed a bolt missing from the muffler. Decided I may os well replace the carb assembly right from the manifold with one that I know works, in doing so the second muffler bolt broke off in the engine. OK, so I'm not going to lose my cool and do something I regret or half *** a repair, so I shuffled it aside to be dealt with later somehow.

So that brings me to this basket case, picked it up looking just like this picture, the tape says "oil and fuel drained", it was on the side of the road and I couldn't pass it up. Yes, the fuel tank is duct taped to the shroud which itself has a large ding in it. I don't even know how they did that to the wheel adjusters.



I used parts from two identical mowers (these green Craftsman mowers are everywhere here), and a bag I happened to have(I probably have two dozen bags, so chances are I "happen" to have a lot of matches for anything I pick up). Cleaned up, carb swapped, and here is what I have, a nice running rear bagger that doesn't even need to be primed to start.



Pics are with my phone, not my DSLR, so they arent as great as before. The cable looks a bit gnarly but is functional and the price will reflect it's cosmetic appearance.