My Lawn Mower Repair Thread (56k warning)

[EdG]

How are you matching the paint? I noticed that your not cleaning over the labels, but the paint looks perfect in the pics. I have a feeling your a painter in you real life I have a troy bilt that needs some red paint from one of those that left their mowers outside

Thanks for the tour!!

 

[hanyoukimura]

How are you matching the paint? I noticed that your not cleaning over the labels, but the paint looks perfect in the pics. I have a feeling your a painter in you real life I have a troy bilt that needs some red paint from one of those that left their mowers outside

Thanks for the tour!!

I've actually only applied paint to two mowers so far. One was that little MTD mower I completely restored for fun, and the other is the 21" Poulan Pro where I applied black Rust-olium to the lower portion of the deck.

All of the other I restore the paint using automotive care products, chiefly rubbing compound and a drill attached buffing pad leftover from when I restored my headlights. Even the cheap compound (like Turtle Wax) works wonder on weathered mowers, just takes a little elbow grease. :smile:

 

[hanyoukimura]

A busy day today.

I finished up the Poulan. For your enjoyment, before and after photos:

Before:

Now:

Almost looks new, even the wheels cleaned up well. :thumbsup:

After that I washed the Honda (used it a couple days ago), the push Poulan Pro which for now is my "beater" mower, as well as the Toro. Didn't have time for photos of those though.

My other project for today was swapping the Briggs engine from that red Craftsman to the green Craftsman with the blown Tecumseh motor. The green one was nasty. All kinds of oil soaked dirt and grass all over the underside of the deck and under the belt shroud.

I managed to get the hybrid mower together enough to try starting it before I had to clean up for work. First pull it fired up, and to my delight the crankshaft is, as I suspected, straight. Idles very smoothly. Good thing it fired up first pull though, as the rope snapped when I pulled it. >:/

Tomorrow if I have time I would like to hook up the drive system and see if it works. If so then I'll have a good mower to sell. :smile:

Photos tomorrow.

 

[hanyoukimura]

So the little Murray I got last year has finally gone to a new home...work! They bought the mower off me to mow the lawn round the building. They didn't need a huge mower so this little mulcher works perfectly.

This mower is a combination of a 20" Murray deck with the 3.5 Briggs Classic off a larger, rotted out Murray mower held together with duct tape. The Quantum engine found a home on a larger Yard Man (which I still need to finish).

Here it (and the duct tape mower) is last year when I got it.

And this morning right before I loaded it up to take it to work.

The paint's not perfect, but much better than it was!

Gotta say for a 3.5 horsepower motor that little Briggs is pretty ballsy. It managed to cut down weeds that were like 3 feet tall (first time this year the lawn has been mowed).

Since my work now owns it my boss put me in charge of maintenance, so it'll at least be well cared for. :smile:

Meanwhile, I got a whole bunch of Tecumseh carburetors in the mail today! These things are way cleaner than the stuff I've had to deal with, lol. I put one on the the Craftsman and sure enough, it fired up and stayed running. Tomorrow I just have to adjust the governor (it idles too high for my liking), change the oil, and its all set to sell again.

I think I'm going to continue to do what I've started doing lately and instruct buyer on how to care for their machines so things like rotted out carburetors don't happen. At least one person (the guy who bought the Scotts) seemed to be very grateful to learn about.

As an aside, it's nice to see these things being put back to use. Those two Murrays were on their way to the scrap yard, I just happen to be there to ask the scrap guy for them in exchange for some rotors I had from doing my brakes.

 

[hanyoukimura]

Well, the Poulan actually just sold for $135. :smile:

Nice guy, seems like he'll take good care of it, he said he uses Star Tron in all his gas and plans to store it inside, so that's good to hear. He and his wife liked it a lot. Both were impressed (and so was I when I finished fixing it) of how easy it is to start. A gentle pull of the rope is all it takes to get it going. It's come a long way, lol.

The Craftsman is now finished. The governor arm was out of adjustment, good now. Cleaned it up and now its ready to sell again.

I'm still amazed by the damage that was done to the carburetor considering that he seemed to take good care of it otherwise. The deck was pretty clean (although I shined up the paint), the oil had just been changed, so had the air filter and spark plug. Oh well. The new carburetor did the trick!

 

[hanyoukimura]

Well that was fast! The little Craftsman is gone for $84 (he forgot to bring an extra dollar lol).

Meanwhile...

I few a weeks ago I acquired a Craftsman self propelled bagger for $15. Owner said she heard a loud bang and the engine died. It's got no hole in the block that I can see but no compression either, so its probably toast. I'd like to know more about this engine though. It's a Tecumseh flat head but different from all the ones I've worked on before.

The deck itself is solid although around around the edges.

I've been playing with it the past few days, performing a heart transplant from this mower:

Pity how it looks nice at a glance but is thoroughly trashed. He was trying to mow boulders or something. The deck has big dents in it underneath, the blade is bent to hell, and two motor mounts are completely gone and the other was barely holding the engine on. I fear the worst bust decided to try transplanting it because it started right up.

So onto the green Craftsman it went. Luckily, Craftsman mowers are pretty similar in design, and everything bolted right up. The green one's blade is in great shape so I put it on and was rewarded with the an engine that not only fires right up but runs super smooth. Amazing the crankshaft wasn't damaged. I'll have to get some photos of the red deck before I scrap it to show just how bad it was.

The deck itself was filthy and oil covered underneath, and the paint was pretty on the left side, so I decided to see what I could do. I had hoped to get OEM paint, but they only place I can find it is SearsPartsDirect and they want $15 for that sh｡t. I ended up settling with Dark Hunter Green by Rust-olium I found at the hardware store, and blending the paint. Honestly, I don't think it came out too shabby. If I had done more prep work (I only sanded the rust and loose paint off, didn't smooth everything), it would have been even better. All things considered though, I think its a definite improvement, and it'll help keep the rust at bay.

 

[hanyoukimura]

So I've got a couple new members.

One of them is a friend's Toro Recycler he asked me to service. Had water in the gas and is pretty dirty. Carb bowl is corroded and the gaskets will need to be replaced, but it would eventually run before and should run well when done.

I also picked this up for $10 from a very nice person. He said he put 2-stroke in the tank and probably ran it still it died.

In good shape though. Assuming I can get it running it'll be a nice on to sell.

 

[hanyoukimura]

So the Yard Machines mower is a 11A-414F352. I've had one of these before, same exact same model. This one however, was in much better shape to start with (it also came with a bag). Now it looks practically new, especially after touching up the paint on the gas tank.

Turns out he put 2-troke oil in the gas tank. All I had to do was rinse out the tank, clean the carburetor, get the oil out of the combustion chamber, empty the oil out of the muffler, and replace the spark plug. Starts first pull now and runs great. All ready to find a new home.

I got the Yard Man all cleaned up. I'm kinda bummed that I never found a matching engine cover for it, but its not like anyone looking to buy it will care. I need to get bolts to mount the mulch plug (didn't come with them), and a bolt for the air cleaner shroud. I found a spare blade that will fit the deck, as the temp one that's on there isn't really any good. This one is good, just not pretty, So after sharpening/balancing it I spent a couple minutes with my wire brush attachment for the angle grinder and a coat of paint later and it goes from looking similar to this one...

...to this:

The mower as a whole has come a long way I think.

Especially considering from where it started.

I also got my friend's Toro back together, which started first pull. So now I just have to change the oil and do my special detailing and its all set.

 

[hanyoukimura]

The Craftsman is gone, for $145

 

[hanyoukimura]

Well the Toro is finally done. I took lots of photos because it turned out well, but also because I love the way these Recyclers look.

:biggrin: