Sixty Dollar Mower

Tuesday, 5 April 2011

The house Karrie's renting has a huge yard, probably like a half acre and it would take hours to mow. So i looked on Craigslist for a while and saw a riding mower for $100. The add said it cranks over but won't start. When i showed up the guy turned the key and nothing happened. He fiddled around with it for a while but still nothing. He said how about $60, so i said sure.

What i know is that it's a Lawn Chief riding mower. I think the 11 - 36 means that it's an 11 horse power engine with a 36" wide cutting deck. I have no idea what year it is. The model number is completely worn off.
As always, using what i've learning:
Compression
Spark/Timing
Fuel/Air

I had a checklist
First i washed and cleaned everything
The air filter was full of oil and falling apart
Then i had to see if i could get it to turn over. I used a screw driver to jump the connection across the solenoid. It worked, the engine started to crank. So following the wires back from the solenoid i realized the problem was a loose wire at the starter. I cut it, rewired it and soldered it in place and the problem was fixed.
I checked the compression and it was around 55psi. Good enough
After working on the last mower i made sure i checked to see that the timing pin wasn't sheared. It looked ok. I was going to remove the fly wheel but after an hour of hitting with a hammer and prying i couldn't get it off so i gave up.
The guy i bought it from said that it just wouldn't start one day so he tried messing with the carburetor but it still didn't work. When i took the carburetor apart it was super dry and lots of powdered gas. It's there on the concrete next to the bowl.
I cleaned the carburetor and even soaked the jets in a coffee can full of carb cleaner for 24 hours. My hope was that the engine was fine and all it needed was a good cleaning and some fresh fuel. So i put everything back together, added gas and after about 2 minutes it started up.

The engine ran ok but the carburetor needs to be tweaked a bit so it doesn't stall. After driving it around the yard a couple times it was a lot better. Now it starts just fine.

I oiled and WD-40'd everything, changed the oil, sharpened the blades, wrapped all exposed wires with electrical tape and it was set to go. All 4 tires were flat and i thought i'd have to get at least 1 new inner tube, but when i filled them up with air there were no leaks.

It has 3 gears, all of them slow. The shifter must have broken at some point so the previous owner used a lug nut.

I didn't like it so i made a new wood one from a branch in the yard. I cut a section of it that fit my hand, then stained it and covered it in 4 coats of polyurethane.

I thought i was all done. But i wasn't.

For some reason the mower would move, but only in first gear and only really slowly. It turned out to be the belt and pulley on the transmission were slipping. There wasn't enough tension because a frame bracket broke off. It was only being held on by one side. So i fixed the bracket with a piece of angled steel. Now the frame was actually attached to the transmission with enough tension.

It ran great in 1st, 2nd and 3rd gear. Then it broke again...
Very confused I checked everything again and saw that the spark plug wasn't sparking. I had to re-solder an old cracked wire and then bend the tip of the spark plug to decrease the gap.

Finally, all done.

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$30 Mower

Tuesday, 15 March 2011

Last week i bought a lawnmower on craigslist for $30. It runs, which means it is already better off than the old Snapper riding mower i bought last year. It can also mulch or attach a bag to collect the grass clippings. The one downside is that it isn't self propelled. That's not a huge deal because i will only be using this to mow in tight corners where i can't get with the riding mower.

So i got it home, cleaned it, sharpened the blade, sprayed it with WD-40 and then oiled everything. The motor is a Briggs & Straton just like the Snapper mower. It's 5hp and seems to run well.

One problem it had was the throttle cable was jammed. Apparently the last owner figured the way to un-jam it was to pull so hard on the handle that it snapped off. So i removed the cable and tried everything to loosen it. After about 30 minutes of bending the cable and twisting the wire it finally freed up.

Now i had to fix the broken throttle handle. First i thought of just cutting a piece of aluminum and bolting it on to where the original had snapped off. But then i noticed an old bicycle tire quick release. I ground off the rivet and the new handle fit perfectly around the broken plastic dial.

One bolt and nut was all it took. Simple and strong.

It almost looks like it was meant to be there.

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Hundred Dollar Mowers

Thursday, 2 September 2010

I had been looking to buy an old riding mower for my lawn and i finally bought one, well actually i bought 2. They are the same model but the second one is just for parts. It's engine was in pieces in a cardboard box. I got them on craigslist both for $100 which is way cheaper then any riding mower you can find. People usually want around $250 for one, so i could always sell them for at least double. The good mower even has a bagger for grass and leaves in the fall.

The reason that they were cheap is that neither of them ran. The guy said that the one did last year but now it doesn't start. A likely story. I don't know a lot about engines, but keeping it simple all you need to know is:
fuel, spark & compression

So i started reading online about some common problems people have had. This website is by an old motorcycle mechanic who tells you basically everything you need to know about working on motorcycle engines. Dan's MC It's mainly motorcycle related and i've used it before, but the information is good for any small engines too. He always says, "take you're time and don't panic." Like my motorcycle i figured the worst thing that could happen would be for it to burst into a ball of flames and i'd be out a hundred bucks. So i got started trying to fix it.

It was getting fuel, i cleaned out the carburetor
It was getting spark, i checked it on the side of the engine.
It was getting 60-70 pounds of compression which isn't great, but should be enough.
I tried spraying starting fluid in the cylinder... nope.
Cleaned out the head and valves, which were a little dirty... still nothing.
So after 4 days i was ready to take the engine completely apart, since i didn't know what else to do, but then i thought about the Timing.

A couple of days before i realized that someone had changed the points and condensers with an electronic ignition. The points were in a plastic jar.
I had actually seen the problem 2 days ago but with my limited knowledge i didn't notice it. There's a metal wedge/pin which locks the crank shaft to the flywheel. There should be only 1 of those metal wedges. I wasn't smart enough to realize that my engine had 2. It used to be 1 but must have sheared in half, usually after someone runs over a rock or stump. Those are the 2 metal pieces on top. See how the 2 cut-outs in the center of the shaft and wheel don't line up.
So i went downstairs, cut an old allen wrench in half, lined up the marks, put it in there and tada, it started right up.
The pin holds everything in place and makes sure that it sparks at just the right time, the problem i had was that it was sparking randomly because the wheel was slipping.

Another cool thing about the mowers is that they can be stood on end during the winter for storage, saving space. So hopefully this will be the end of me raking leaves and push mowing. Although i drove it around the yard a bit and it was a scary ride and might be tough to mow in tight corners.

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