A Lawnmower

The grass is growing a lot of clover, so during the week we decided to seek out a second hand mower (the person originally doing it has been slack, I wonder if our storage arrangement also got slack if they’d be so accepting – rain?)

I found one on Gumtree (which is good, because I was originally considering adding it to the proxy filter list due to the useless ‘central coast’ searches).

A mower was up for sale for $20, about 30 mins drive from us:
http://centralcoastnsw.gumtree.com.au/c-ViewAdLargeImage?AdId=308682622

Looks alright for $20 – doesn’t work she says, she’s not mechanically minded. I figure it might be something simple, or might be only scrap metal, either way it’s worth a shot for $20 (a cut costs $50!).

I get it back today, start it up – won’t turn over, it pulls and tries to start, but it won’t. So I take a look at fuel – there’s some in there, unknown age. The spark plug connection is loose, but there’s contact. The air filter – is in a poor condition.

With each pull you can start to see oil coming out of the exhaust of the mower, so we keep pulling and getting more oil out, but more closer to progress, and then it starts!… and stops.
Then it starts again. And stops.
And again. More oil on the deck.

Then after a few more pulls, it finally starts and stays started. I let it run for a bit as it smokes out the yard and remainder of our street.

Then I get to cutting, I start with a small easy patch to avoid it stalling and progressively start cutting the lawn, and get to the clover growing near the clothesline, it cuts through just fine.

I probably got 20 minutes into cutting it and it stalls. Catcher was just emptied and I ran over a small patch of clover, so it wasn’t struggling.

I tried pulling off the fuel tank and cleaning up the fuel a bit, it’d start but wouldn’t stay started stalling within 1 second of starting.
I checked spark plug, seemed OK to me, dark but not oily.

I then thought the fuel might be crap (we don’t know when it was last used) – but after draining the fuel and refilling again, no joy.

I couldn’t get the carby off as I couldn’t find a flat head screw driver – how is that, that I have 4 philips within arms reach, but no flat head to be found easily anywhere.

I know there is spark from testing the plug outside the hole, it was sparking as expected.

Hopefully it works tomorrow so I can finish cutting the grass, there’s about 25% of the back yard that looks good, the rest looks crap as it’s badly overgrown.

It’s