Hello:
I guess that I should give a heads up on why I replaced so many parts on my 5239 mower. Perhaps one may understand what I was doing for the last several years .
The first year it was fuel problems. This included fuel leaking fron the shutoff at the tank. This was replaced.
The engine always leaked fuel from between the carb halves, To solve this, I replaced the needle and seat, float and gaskets. This did not stop the leak. At the same time, raw fuel was being ejected from the carb while the engine was running. I checked the reeds and reed plate and replaced the gasket between the reed plate and the engine. After a couple of years of being confused by this problem, I stumbled into the cure for the too much fuel problem. Despite the fact that I had replaced the float, the float was hanging up in the fully open position. Why did this happen? I do not know but it did . It stopped hanging up by itself! PFM! Yes, all of the parts that I replaced were the correct ones!
The engine's electrical problem lasted for about three years. The engine would lose spark for no reason thus a quest for thie soloution to the intermittant spark problem.
I began with the spark plug, then the points,condensor, and lastly the coil. It was a bad coil! I replaced the coil with a used coil that worked well, One day, the used coil gave up with no spark. I bought a new coil and while I was replacing the coil, I noticed tha the wire from the points to the coil had broken under the coil. I researched the problem and found the LB did have aproblem with faulty coils.
The next problem was that the flywheel had hit the legs on the coil. The flywheel also hit the governor and destroyed the governor. Inspection showed that the flywheel had a crack in the centre that permitted the flyweel to sit lower on the crankshaft thus hitting the other parts. Thus the need for a new flywheel!
The wheels were replaced due to splitting of the tires due to age.
As one can see, I now have an engine that is almost new! Lol
I did find a LB that I asked about several weeks ago had not been sold to the original buyer. I got it for $125.00. It is supposed to be like new, It is a 19" with the solid state ignittion system. The only problem is that it is 3.5 hours away! Lol
Can you say that I really like the 19" LB mowers that have the cast decks! Since my wife does all of the trimming, I like to provide her with a mower that is easy to handle. Now to sell my fleet of 21" mowers!
I hope that this explains why I spent so much money, time and aggravation of keeping the 5239 running.
Franchi
