while cruising some back roads, we came across this free mower on the side of the road with a sign stating it does not run. lets go through every thing it takes to bring a lawn mower back to good running condition.

And on the side of the road, it is a lawnmower that says tree won't start. What do you say? We throw that in the truck, bring it back to the operating table, see what it needs. It's a pretty nice machine about 10 years old. Maybe overhead valve put it in there: hey guys how's it going so it's been about a week or so that i picked this up on the side of the road and i've done nothing to it, so that you and i can kind of hang out and work On it together and figure out, what went on looks like it sat out for a season or two doesn't look terribly dirty and of course, free won't start seems to be the motto of it: uh, i'm not sure what year it is.

I think it's got a tag on the back. Let's see what we got all right here, we go 2012.. Well, it meets the safety standards for 2012., we'll call it that we'll say it's: 10 years old i haven't even tried pulling the cord on it. Yet, let's give it a quick visual see if we think anything, that's a little funky.

One thing i see right away is: it looks like it was spitting rust out of the muffler, not sure. What's going on with that again, it was left out in the rain. I'm sure that didn't help looks like the valve cover is leaking some oil on it a little kicky around there. Let's go see yeah we'll wait for fuel and oil handlebars.

I see what we got going on here looks kind of weird. Doesn't it i don't know? It's supposed to be on that angle or not, that might be an issue right in itself right there. It looks like that should be popped over and on there. If that's the case, it's going to have a shut off on this cable.

This cable doesn't get pulled far enough. There is a break and then there's an electrical circuit, that's down on the engine that will not allow it to have spark or kill spark when you let go of it, so that might be even right there. What's going on since you're propped in a stand. Let's go flip around our sides, go check some fluids and figure out what happened.

Let's go flip her on its side, see the other side looks like blade, doesn't look terrible, it's self-propelled on the front. It's got a gearbox in the front. Of course, not cleaned up see any rot holes, i don't see any that's a good sign, blades kind of beat. It still has the wing left on.

This is what gives you the lift, makes the grass kind of stand up and also puts a little bit of a volume pressure. I should say into the mower deck again like a vacuum cleaner into the bagger assembly, wheels, look! Okay, let's go flip it back down! We'll go check on fluids and see if it pulls over, you can get rid of the advertising yeah. Unfortunately, what happens around here the cost to get something fixed or looked at is almost cost prohibitive. Because, like something like this, i don't know: what's this mower, we'll call it say: 250, if it's new you're, probably going to spend 150 bucks on it, just to have a service minimum.

Unless you get like a little local somebody coming around yeah, it's just a hair load, it's got oil on it. Let's go see what the gas cap has to offer that one too, this is no e85. I heard some rumors that they're gon na be taking all fuel and making the e85 well that'd. Be great power equipment has enough hard time.
Gas doesn't look bad. Somebody put fresh gas in it. I wonder if they tried running it for the season. I just wouldn't fire up for them.

I'm suspecting the handle i'm gon na. Let this settle for a little bit. Sometimes you know other than that dirt that dirt may have came out of the turkey baster i was using, but we'll see if you have any water that settles out of that, still might be something in the tank. Yet yeah you got 10 ethanol and fuel that we have now already does a number on our stuff.

Imagine an opening, there's, probably the original filter. It's not wet, that's good! Let's pull the plug! Actually, let me go lower it down and uh we'll see if it spins over how's that maybe yeah priority. Let's just see we get, it feels okay, we got compression, let's go, throw a clamp up on the handlebar and we'll keep that red lever knocked down and we'll give it a yank see if it has any spark we'll pull the plug out. I think i talked about the fuels before different videos.

You know our area ethanol freeze not easily easily. Instead of weird easily obtained some boat marinas and uh airports, we can kind of grab, but if not, they really like you got ta, go about 16 miles or so to go, get it yeah. Some of you guys have it still readily available at your gas stations, but that's also why there's so much free power equipment on the side of the road here, especially like really small engine, stuff mowers and whatnot, not too bad they'll still screw them up. Yes, a bit excessive about on the oil on it, but the stuff like uh, you know, chainsaws, weed whackers.

That kind of thing they really don't hold up. Well, just do one of those, the other one's the drive, i believe for uh making it go. Hopefully, i should be able to grab the string right here. We're gon na look right at that.

That's got spark yep, it's got spark so that wasn't the issue good makes it a little bit more difficult all right. This is shifting google. Let's go pop. This cover off, and hopefully we can kind of see what i was talking about as far as it not making ground it's pretty common.

Actually i say that on mowers for no spark and on generators, it's generally the low oil shut off. It's like someone was possibly in here and cleaned out a rat's nest. It looks like it had a mouse nest in it and somebody actually went and took it all out of there. The other thing, too, is if you hit something real hard, it'll shear, the key.

Let's go look on the other side. Actually, i was talking about as far as the cable, so here's that cable that pulls from up above and it has a ground wire that goes to the coil or the magneto, which is underneath the flywheel that makes sparks and it'll ground it out. I would say it's probably that wire all right - that's everything's black, so it's kind of hard to see, there's a wire right there. So if this cable does not pull far back enough, does two things one there's a brake shoe: that's the brakes.
Let me uh undo it instead of talking about it all right, so you can see the movement it has. Has the brake shoe that sp stops the engine from spinning and then it has a ground that it touches and it grounds out the coil and shuts the spark off at the same time. So if your handle, your cable is only pulling it, you know that far it doesn't. I don't know if you can even see right there, it's not making it yet it just barely makes it.

You know this one is barely making it. Let me get you okay, so we're looking at this tab right here, and this is the ground pad right there, and these two have to separate for the ground to go away. Okay, look that is just making it by a hair, just clearing it, so it still may be part of the issue. I also noticed it's got a bunch of crap sitting on top of it too, so um it may not want to shut off.

It seems like there's a bunch of crud on that pad this stuff. I really shouldn't this stuff should be here all that that's going to stop it from uh wanting to shut off. Let's go clean that off real sec. All right real set clean it off for a second i'll, bring you back we'll look at that.

One more time might be too much light, but we'll see - and you got about a see right - that's touching! That's not that there's not much room that this is making it by and again a lot of times what happens. The cables will just kind of stretch out, or sometimes the jacket breaks down and the cable kind of falls in a little further up. Sometimes a good trick is you can actually just pull them back a little bit and put a tie, wrap behind them. Get that little extra generally, it's morally up in this area that kind of gets the beating, especially if somebody is uh, takes the handle and flips it down a lot of times.

It kind of beats the cable up a little bit all right. Let's go see if we can figure out why it doesn't run so another thing this thing has on: it's got an automatic throttle, you don't adjust the throttle and it has automatic choke. This is the choke that you're looking at right here and then it's functioning. It is closed when it's cold, what it has it has like a little thermal cylinder spring uh.

I think it's probably tapping off the exhaust and, as the engine warms up it realizes, the engine is getting warmer. It slowly backs the choke off and then, as it gets colder. It'll close it back up i'll show you that. So that's this linkage right here.

You can see it's coming up off the exhaust, it's probably in the airflow too, of hot air and as the air heats up like i said, it'll it'll take that and rotate it which direction we go. Well, too. You see it yeah and it'll just allow that to back off. I do think it also holds.
It's got two separate. Let's get the light on. It's got two separate levers on it, so this is the one coming from the coil. So that's going to go back.

It off as it warms up, but it also has as the throttle revs up. This is the throttle right here and goes to a governor that revs up that'll also turn the choke off. So it seems like it may have a little bit of light pressure choke when it's uh, even when it's warmed up. Not quite sure on that.

So my guess: we're going to have a fuel issue, but let's go take the plug. We'll go square a little bit of fuel in the plug hole, put the plug in it, we'll give it a kick see what it does if it fires off for us and we'll give her a little a little prime for a good time should be enough. Just to see if it costs and fires over plus, we get a chance to listen to it too make sure there's no clacking or knocking not that it may not do it when it warms up, but generally, if they're blowing up it'll, let you know pretty quickly. All right, let's get that in by hand, let's give her a shot yeah, sometimes you, prime them they they take off and they stay running.

That's what's gon na happen, but sounds like the government. A little bit of fuel run through it to kind of go suck up. What was in the float pole? So that's what was going on with here. The governor was stuck in the beginning of it, though it was revving real high.

Let's go pop that cover back off and we're just going to do a service on this, like we do on a regular machine and uh, you know any kind of tips and tricks i can show, and you guys want to contribute anything to it. Yeah cool! More than welcome to go do so, i don't know if it shows up there's that gas, that's in it see how cloudy it is and definitely absorb some moisture you can see. I can it's even hard to see to the bottom, could a little clearly kind of like speaking yeah, so let's go out dump that fuel tank right out. It's gon na need it how's this during.

Let's go get that that's a full tank, keep getting polly walks coming out of it a little bit of something spitting out of it. Oh yeah, the very bottom of it was not very pleasing. I want to drop it on the floor. I'm watching that front tire.

Slips off the bench, yeah kind of a mixed opinion as far as it's good, if you can get all the fuel out of something, and if you can't do that, fill it all the way up to the top when you're putting it away, it doesn't leave any Air space for moisture to travel but yeah, you can see how cloudy that is, i'm not sure if the camera doesn't look as bad in the camera as it does in real. But it's hard to see: there's just crap in the bottom there you can see it see if those are ants. Where are they yard crap all right? We should probably get that float ball off of there too, but before we do that more we're flipping it on its side, let's go see if it has a drain plug underneath, i generally never really use them. I usually just do the same.
We did with the gas for the uh i do for the gas i do for the oil just kind of flip it on inside. Let it come out the fill plug. A lot of the newer motors are getting motors mowers, yeah motor are getting rid of that and they're just having to do that all together. It may be underneath that plastic cover where the drive belt is for the front, but again, let's go get another pan, we'll flip it.

The other direction, get the oil out of it. Let's go. Do the other side same thing. I try to hang the tires about an inch away from the edge that needed it.

So you know this thing's 10 years old and never really had any service to it, which is actually pretty common. Some people will change the oil if they put an air filter on it. That's usually about it. They'll change a blade when it hits a rock and it's shaking real, bad and bent, and nothing left underneath or it's three inches shorter than it normally is supposed to be it's low on oil too.

What's that mower work with some mower like this worth after you service it yeah 80 bucks, 100 bucks self-propelled. They had the bagger 120 bucks, maybe uh about how old it is and how whatever new stuff is selling for, like a third to half of what a new one is, so if anyone's 250 and 125 around there, if it's complete, like i said this, does this? Doesn't have the bagger, so i'd say like a hundred bucks 80 bucks, how much time you're gon na go put in it, we'll see that by the end of the video, how much time we put in how many parts you go through if you had like, i Said you had to go drop off to get serviced, you're already past the price of it a little sparkly. It's got a little bit of metallic to it. Nothing terrible though i don't see any i'll see big parts floating around.

You can see that definitely the little rainbow metal rainbow inside there that's engine guts. Let's get the carb off at least the flow pole float chamber. I think this one might have a plastic one on it. Some of the newer stuff switched over to that all right.

One more you tell me: you saw it yeah plastic, carp, uh. I think it's got a coupler nope. It just comes off of pressure, let's see if we can get the choke lever off of it and we got to get this spring. I think we got to get that spring off in there nope.

I could stay on there. There's one piece, just a choke lever. I might be able to lift up and let me get the fuel line out. First, the gas can might just flip right out of our way there we go get the gas line off not necessary, but for filming purposes, people have never gone into any of this stuff.

This allows you to see it a little bit better and let's go get those pliers, try not to beat it up too much there we go plus we want to clean that tank out a little more now. We should be able to flip it up. It should come off of there yeah. We should be able to flip it up and get the linkages off if they had multiple locations to go, i'd mark them, but it doesn't seem to just one for each one, sometimes you'll see like it'll have like four or five holes on different linkages.
So let's go bring on the bench. Let's go pop that bottom of that bowl off and see. We got the crud. It's got a little allen, wrench plug in the bottom.

I've generally found, though you need the right size socket. I generally found that if you don't pull the ball off it generally, a lot of generals will have crud in it. That needs to be get cleaned out. Fortunately, the plastic doesn't rust, but what it does do is warp, let's see if we can get that apart.

Let me go get a little screwdriver there. I go place the pry on. Let's try like that kind of flimsy. I don't want to break, got like an o-ring inside there that swells up and locks up it's pretty clean, we're still going to go.

Take it apart and blow it out, though, because we got this far, so it's just a needle in the seat and a jet jets down inside there and we're gon na go pull that pin that'll, allow us just to get the needle out of it. Yeah! Here's the needle what would a musty one video be without taking a carburetor apart right, so i'm gon na look down the center of that. I believe you can pull that out, but the plastic stuff gets a little kind of temperamental. It's not as strong as um.

The metal stuff, so it stands a good chance to get damaged i'll give a little bit of it ran on it was running okay, so i don't want to damage something we're going to leave well enough alone, that's where it's drawn fuel up through there. So i'm just going to go hit it with some compressed air, we're going to blow out the rest of it. We're going to blow out the bowl clean it out, there's a little bit of crud in there, not terrible, but there's there's junk in there i'll go. Rinse it out we'll put that back together, we'll call that part good, definitely wash your hands for reassembly.

My hands were dirtier than the carb was so that's the main issue. It's gon na be right down inside there and just give it a rest of it. A bunch of rinse i'll just come back with some compressed air again. We know it ran and idled.

So we know it's not too bad, so i'm gon na go re. Let's go doesn't take much to uh plug that little pin up too. You look at the the size of that pinhole again, the smaller the machine, the smaller that surface is right there and all you need is a little speck of dirt go up inside there. That's it! So the needle like that, i'm going to wash your hands needle hangs off the float drop.

It in actually looks like that one could pop straight down. It's got like a weird. Let's try. It looks like it'll pop straight down in yeah.

Again, i'm just gon na blow through it this direction. I should not be able to blow through that's the fuel inlet, nothing float's gon na hang down. I could blow through it that's good! Let me go give that a quick little rinse like a little bit of dirt on it, get rid of that. That's it nice and simple on this one huh motorcycle carbs and all you take them apart.
There there's a ton of stuff in them. There you go. I'm sure it's gon na fight me just as much put it back together as i took it apart, my 180 out there's your problem i'll, let it crush the float, i'm going to double check it, one more time and with the bowl on i'll just blow through It make sure that it's opening and closing, let's go take a quick peek at the blade. No, you know what let's go, i'm not sure which is going to be easier or harder to do.

I want to just take a quick look at the belt that drives it. If there's no issues with it, we're going to leave it alone, but let's go flip it over we'll go look at sharpening the blade and then we'll go see if we could take a peek at the belt, see if there's any tears or rips in it. Well, definitely needs a little bit of love under here as far as a cleanseliness. That, generally is what rots the deck the decks out.

They get grass and then like over the course of the winter. Water will stay behind them and then it rots the deck out from behind it'll start lifting the paint and take it out. A little scraper will take care of that i'd say once you like right before you put it away, it's probably the best time to go. Do that it won't hurt the plastic but, like i said, the middle, the metal areas it'll start to make the the paint kind of you can see where it's resting it'll make it flake away this one's not too bad a lot more, really blown out generally on Something like this, what i would do it's not that important! I know i'm going to catch health with this thesis, like you know, balancing the blades and putting out on a little teeter totter and making sure you got even weight on each side.

If you look at the blade and the blade is pretty complete, it's not bent. Let me go pop, your stand, real, quick. If a blade is not bent uh or you know a section chunk taken out of it or you know it took a real hard hit. It as long as you sharp on both sides, you're taking so minimal off, there's really not going to be any weight difference on it.

What i like to do is i'm going to go put my thumb right here, just where i'm touching the blade, there's no plug or nothing in it. The brake is on it's going to drag a little, i'm going to go spin that blade around and i'm going to see what the difference is between the two of them. This one has maybe an eighth inch difference between the two. So it's got a very slight band.

It could be on the spindle. It could be on the blade itself. It's not that important you're not going to notice an eighth of an inch difference in cutting of your grass. It's going so fast, there's really not even going to be a difference.
We're going to go buzz this off, because i want to go look at the the belt. That's underneath it anyway before i do this. When i show you what i would do jimmy, i take a grinder. This is a cutting wheel, but i'll take a grinding disc and i would just work the back edge of it back and forth, and just kind of sharpen both edges on the blade right on the deck i wouldn't even bother taking it off.

This actually doesn't look too bad. It's got. You know one ding right there, where it nailed something the you can't even see. The area that usually gets wiped out will be about that much that's.

How much really does any work? This stuff really is never even seen very much. This is what, as you're pushing the mower. You know this thing's spinning uh 60 times a second at 3, 600 rpm so 60 times a second. This blade is passing by the the front of this as you're going so the grass never unless you're running about you know 120 miles an hour.

The grass is never even able to get into here before the next time comes around. It's always just going to be that very little edge on it right there, that's doing all the work. So that's why a lot of times you look at the blade on the wear and you'll see that it's kind of like that much if it's cooked away all right, let's get the blade off yeah! You can see that that blade isn't bad at all. It's actually very good, it's probably one of the best.

You know it's got a lot of corrosion and stuff on it, but it's still thick there's no damage to it. A lot of times you'll see a crack will start forming right here on these little lift plates. These will actually kind of start burning down and wearing away. The the surface of this will will go away on you and then you'll start getting a crack, and then this will wing a chunk of one ounce metal at you at 10, 000 miles an hour.

So i'm just gon na go on the regular uh belt. Grinder we'll take care of that, but we're gon na go dig a little bit more and get this cover off. We'll just take a quick look at that belt. This engine does not have a drain plug.

I don't see one go grab that light, there's nothing on this one. Ah sometimes this may be a cover that can come off of here, but we're not going to get into any of that might have been a boss somewhere on on the old casing. We used to be able to take it apart, but, as you can see, there's no drain plug on there anywhere they just dip it to the side. Look at the belt, i'm not seeing anything as far as any chomps in it.

It looks decent, decent enough to run for a mower deck anyway. Let's go clamp the lever on the handlebars and we'll see that we got some decent tension and see we got that looks pretty good. It doesn't take too much plus on this one. There is that boss that was ripped out of the handlebars that was holding the cables and we talked about for the spark and for the break of it.
Well, the other cable is going through that. So if we put that back in place, that'll give us even a little bit more tension, it doesn't take much to go, drive the front of these and actually the like when you're babying it or you're, trying to like slip it a little bit, you're actually slipping. The belt around it's not like, there's a clutch up inside there, that's going on and off. The idea is just to slip the belt.

So that's good enough for now we're gon na go leave that alone. We're not gon na go chase that and we're under here. I'm just gon na take a few minutes, knock some of this loose crap off of here. You don't need to watch that.

Do you i'll bring you back when i scrape some of the crap out of it and that's just about two or three minutes later. Let's give you an idea, you can see now what i'm talking about what it does. It holds the moisture against the paint. Then the paint peels away as the paint peels away.

Now it even holds more moisture behind it and eventually, just kind of you know, rots the deck out and goes away. You see it's all gone through here i mean if you're really anal about it, you can take it and paint it uh. It's gon na be loaded up with grass fairly quickly all over again, especially if you cut wet grass uh at the end of the year. If you're gon na go do a maintenance on like run the fuel out of it, you can kind of dip the tank on its side and then just start it up until it runs out of gas, it's probably the best way to go and then flip it Outside real, quick and spray, some like fluid film or something after you scrape the crap off just spray with some like fluid film, some kind of oil and then you'll be all set right now.

It's kind of you can put it on, but it's not gon na. It's not gon na stay. It's gon na come right off of there right again, like i said, yeah right off all right. Let's go sharpen the bait.

The blade we'll put the cover back on and uh flip her back on. It's a shiny side. There's really nothing! Even really wrong, with this blade again, it's got a nick from hitting a rock or something but go through the motions. So you wouldn't believe how many mower decks.

I get it like yard sales. People see they're not cutting very well that the blade is upside down and it's put on like that it'll cut kinda because it actually kind of seems like it would be. That way you know, doesn't it it almost kind of looks like well? Wouldn't you want the shoulder to kind of wrap around and support it? It really doesn't there's a key. That's in there nope the sharp side down looks pretty good.

If you haven't, if you don't have an impact gun generally, you could take like a 2x4 or something and jam it between like one of the the openings here, you can bring the blade around and jam like a 2x4 inside there and then just use like a Socket wrench just be careful covering your hands. You don't slip off and punch the blade you know, especially when you're tightening it, because now you're going you know into the lid. I really wouldn't do this this time of year, but just for demonstration purposes and i'm not endorsing any kind of product. This is fluid film, as i was talking about any kind of greasy material, they make two kinds.
This is more like a clear, but you can see how it like clings on to it and they have a black a black just to make it look prettier, it's the same thing with just a little bit of coloring in it so make you feel better about Your rusted frame that's under your car, but i would do something like this. I generally use like a barn chain, oil more and then in the uh in the fall and some people use them always year round. But in our area, it's like six months on six months off. I would do that and if you had a snow, blower and you're kind of like swapping seasons, i would do the same with them.

Spray that on there that's going to wash right off of there as you're using it, but you know you get the idea, get ready to flip it down, but one thing i kind of want to go over is wheels, sometimes you're, better off leaving them alone. If you have like a graphite kind of lube, which is like a dry lube - and these are a little bit more - these are different as far as they're set up a lot of times. You got a cap with a nut. That's in here you can pop the cap off out of the way this whole help.

Cap may pop right off, i'm not sure, and you can kind of spray that right in there as far as like spraying, the stuff i just used, you can unfortunately, sometimes that makes it even worse, especially if you have a gravelly or sandy area that you're doing With a mower deck and you're kicking a lot of dust and dirt up, what happens is, as this thing is spinning around it kind of clings to that oil, and then the oil now has a gritty dirt stuck in it. It actually does even worse. It kind of grinds up the plastic against the steel in there and chews them up more than normal uh mowered like a rotten lawnmower, not as bad as the wheels the front wheels a little bit further away from the deck, but still kind of the same thing. Give a quick little dusting, it's an air-cooled engine, most of them are and what happens is you have a fan that's up here and it directs air draws air in through the center and steers it across the top of the fins of the engine and cools the Engine off as it's going, a lot of them burn up because this area in well in our area, this area gets clogged up with mouse nests and it packs it all up and there's no airflow going through here.

So if you look through your cover and there you see a bunch of little twigs and sticks and the parts of patio furniture cloth and everything in there you want to pull it off before you run it. That's a real popular thing in our springtime. Here too, people get them running, you know, they'll fight them a little bit until this kind of chews through and makes a path get them fired up and they run them for about 45 minutes it overheats and burns up the engine. Because of that.
Well, i think if we put the carb on while we're here, so this one has a height for the rear axle and the front axle. There's only one adjustment on each side on this one, a lot of times each wheel, especially on the other ones, is individual. Some of the newer ones, it's all done by one location, you'll, be amazed. How many times i find the front and the rear don't match or one wheel is off on the corner and then that'll.

Definitely, you know make the mower deck pitch on an angle. You'll be cutting your grass, you do one direction, you flip around. You go back the other direction and your grass has an angle going up one direction and going back down on the other. It's just because the wheels get knocked out of whack.

These look pretty good. They're, actually, on the same level, trust me i'd, say 30 to 40 percent of the time, so you get that card back on there. Another thing i see popular too is they'll have a broken bit of plastic. Either this boot right here or the uh that's backwards.

That boot will be broken or the body of the carburetor will have a break in and turn people not controlling their temper essentially, and they end up smacking through the uh kicking it breaking the plastic, and then it has an intake leak. After that we got ta. Get that back down in there and they only have one place to go. So it's really simple, but yeah they'll, kick it or sometimes two i found what they'll do is they'll they'll, take it and they'll stack stuff on top of the mower deck in the off season in the garage and the weight of it pushes down and sometimes either Cracks the gas tank or crack the plastic back in there.

I'm just going to take the gas tank and take some compressed air and blow around there just evaporate. Whatever is left inside of there and probably get the outside of it. A bath looks like you can use it. The label has fallen off, throw that back on we'll give her a little.

Some of that figure out, which way is up. It's all the engine info, keep that with it second or two that'll dry pop that tank on not much to it yeah a lot of times, it'll split, you know somebody will step on or kick it or put something on top right where the seam is right. Here, that's where they'll split so you'll fill them up and all of a sudden you'll see like gas kind of coming out. You think it's the cap, it's not it's! Just where the the kind of blow mold blow molded together there.

It's got to go into the other cover the higher low. This cover went like something like that right. There we go, so it's got to go high, get that gas line on there in the 80s today, so the bikes are out like crazy. I don't blame them, because you know what i'm going to do after i'm done with this mower at least go for a ride in the sandpit on the little enduro yamaha 175.
i'll go putt around on that this fuel line is already set up for ethanol fuel. The older ones are not i'll leave that on there looks like it's in good shape. Let's get that air cleaner, set up breather for the crankcase, get that on we'll just buzz those screws back in. We did when we took it apart.

I'm gon na pop the air cleaner back on. It's just got some dirt in it a lot of times you best bet you blow them out from the backside. If you got an air gun, it'll push the dirt out, you get either way knock the heavy stuff off that way. If you can come from behind it, it just blows it out between the pleats, see what i mean show off if they're wet, i just put them out in the sun and let them dry up.

Sometimes they get oil impregnated into them and they're kind of screwed. If that happens, you could try cleaning more brake, clean or something uh generally they're fairly cheap. This one's fine uh a way to tell on an air cleaner. If it's good this one's kind of small to go, do it, but you would put a light behind it and if you can see light kind of going through it, here's my other uh.

If you can see light passing through them, i hope that's showing up or not, but if the light's coming through it, you know it's really clean and it'll still filter air. If you can't see a light through it, then you know it's definitely clogged pink. I think we're good under the hood pop that cover back on there for some good to throw oil in it. Now i don't think we need to flip it over kind of a firm believer in using stuff over.

That is still good. So a lot of people just will automatically throw an air cleaner in it throw a plug in it. When you look at a plug, it will generally be that surface right. There will end up getting round and burned away that one's still flat still straight across the top of it is perpendicular to it.

The gap looks good. You put a feeling gauge on it, but i say it's fine, that's where it fails and the other place where it fails is usually a bunch of crud will build between the uh, porcelain, insulator and the wall on the outside, and what it'll do is it'll arc Going across, i don't see anything really packed, yet i'm gon na go clean that up real quick on a wire wheel and we'll throw that back in there. Let's fill her up one thing, i'd say the as far as oil especially doesn't see what it is. You can try looking it up, but generally a 1030 or 1040 is what the small engine stuff does.

Four-Stroke small engine stuff works on. You don't have to do synthetic or anything like that. Generally, the motors the mower is going to crap out, at least in our area, due to rust. Before anything else, the engines will stay as long as you like the stuff that we talked about not having a mouse nest, letting it overheat.
That kind of thing fail. Nothing yet if you do overfill it just lean on that side, a little bit and dump it out just want to make sure you got all the way down that second, the second that click right there and i think we're good we're going to check it. One more time also what happens to it kind of runs down the side of it. There yeah we're almost at the top dot, call that for a win.

Well, one thing we should probably address. We talked about that lever. Up top is the one that makes the wheels go. I still want to make the engine go, the dead man, you let go of that it dies, but this bracket is flapping.

You can see how much slop is in these cables, because this is popped out of whack. Let's see if we can go, it wasn't very hard get that back into place, and now you can see cable's taut this one's almost top, but you can also see that the spring up here is extending. That means that belt has full tension down below that. This thing that this spring is growing, so that's full tension on that belt down there and the other one feels much better.

Also we're going to go, throw something around this. That feels like it's kind of wimpy. I do see a couple of old tie wraps here. Can we even steal them that might even bend whether we're supposed to be you know, actually that one's probably meant to guide it, keep the cables out of harm's way.

I'm gon na throw one more on that to help support it. Let's just make a match all right wrong, and if you were a dick, you would cut those so that we're going to go point them down, but you would cut those so they would have a nice sharp edge, i'm just going to leave them on there. They're. Not hurting anything yeah, i think we're good.

As far as that's i concerned, all we have to do now is uh put some gas in it. I know a lot of them. Put these little garden hose things on here. You hook your garden hose up to it and you fire it up water splashes down there and it kind of feels like a rinse cycle.

The only problem with that is that you, when you're done you're putting away a mower, that's really wet so whether that's a plus or a minus, i'm not quite sure, it's kind of a kind of gimmicky just my opinion. You want to have at some point when i get out is uh, there's no real mower out back that someone gave me about two years ago i still haven't addressed. We should probably dig that out pretty soon. Let me know what your thoughts are.

If you want to see that one of the old old-fashioned ones, you know the blade goes around like that. Now it's got a horizontal engine in the middle of it. I think it's an errands. Let's go fire.

It up see what it does all right cool as you guess, i'm going to say two one that prime it and want to get it to go three what'd. You say we give it a second there's that whoops, how many pulls so the choke is still on it might clear up in a second or the linkage is out of whack. So we're going to go quick, take a look and make sure that linkage, rod just isn't rubbing on anything. I have in the car i'm going to pop the cover off one more time make sure it's not an issue with that.
That's the only thing i see it looks pretty good it may have like. If we just let it warm up a little bit too, it may have turned itself off, there's a possibility. It was rubbing on the top of that cover. It doesn't seem like it.

This is what we actually looking at that lever right there. Let's go fire it up one more time, we'll let it be just as it is we'll just let it run for a minute or two we'll see if the choke pulls off. If it doesn't, we got to come in here and do a little finagling. Well, that's not as rough as it was yeah.

Possibly it was rubbing right here. Maybe, but the choke is closed again, let's just see what it does pop the air cleaner back on. One more time we'll make sure that it just functions like it should air cleaners on pretty good carpet. Rpm sound like you're, okay, the mower's not shaking around a lot.

So that seems like it's good. Let it come up to temperature. I'm gon na go turn the fan on i'll, bring it right back yeah. It doesn't restart good.

I will say whatever grass they were trying to cut was fairly high, because that's at the top setting that's got to be about four and a half five inches of grass height generally. It depends on your property. I usually shoot for about the middle setting on the wheels see how they move right. I might need two hands: let's go set that one right about there we'll do the middle on the front one too.

Sometimes that stuff will get all bound up to, especially if it's never been moved. We want right there, two up from the lowest and two up from the lowest on the third leg, is the oil and the gas that was in it. So on the gas you see that dark area, that's all water, all that down below that's all water. That's probably a good inch in the middle going across by the whole thing.

That's definitely what it was not running, for, i think they probably put. They probably had that in there it was left outside to be my guess and by the dirt that was on it, and then they poured fresh gas over the top. It tried starting it wouldn't go, and that was the outcome of it: oem oil. So guys, let's give you out it on this.

What i will probably do you know what i normally do is because even like how that choke acted up a little bit on that first start, it stayed on what i'll do is i'll cut my grass with it and then about you, know the following week. I'll give it another cut, see how it cold starts. Make sure everything is is good, that it's going to repeat itself that it doesn't have any other issues that are showing up. If you had a bagger on it, i yeah i probably put out for 120.
If the fact that it doesn't i'm probably going to put it out, i'm gon na stay for 90 see what we get on it. Sometimes they offer you 80 bucks, 90 bucks. Some people just give you it. What you're asking they'll sell fairly quick, it's usually out there for about two or three hours in front of the house, with a sign on it and they're gone so without filming i'd, say we probably would have taken about 35 minutes to do what we did.

If that so is your time worth that we got a dollars worth of oil in it, i don't think we did anything else other than maybe the spray lube underneath it. That's it guys we're gon na go sign off and thank y'all for hanging out with me and uh. You know you have maintenance due on one of your mowers, uh. Hopefully some of the tips and tricks that i did on this one will be uh applicable.

I'm not gon na try saying that again to this one, but for now i think we're done thanks for hanging out, see you soon. I'm going for bike ride, cold start, i'm gon na say: first kick my fault because the chicks so cut get it cut.

By Mustie

4 thoughts on “How to restore a junked lawn mower. for cheap.”
  1. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Mike .R. says:

    Fresh Cupp'a CovFEFE and Mustie on my SUNDAY! LET'S ROLL!

  2. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Nav Vet says:

    Morning gents

  3. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Hola! Mr Mawson says:

    Hello mate ๐Ÿ‘

  4. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars David Browne 2016 says:

    Yup

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