Well there now, Boo-Boo is back, maybe not 100% yet, but he's running on 'most' cylinders and now that he's had a his carb cleaned out (I told you that Sea Foam was good stuff!) he ought to be good as new soon enough...
Yesterday I was able to pick up the John Deere GS-25. It's in rough shape. Well, that's not really true. Considering that it's been left outside in Maine's lovely weather for a number of years, it's not as bad as you might think. Operating it is sort of a 'skid-steer' system and both wheel brakes are frozen solid, one tire wouldn't hold air and when I removed the mower deck cover, I discovered a hoard of chewed up acorns and pine cones, enough to overfill a 10-quart pail! But the engine is free, it had oil in it. I was able to quickly get the pull-starter operating again. (I found it with it's rope hanging out.) and I was surprised at how sturdy everything was made. Quite a difference between a 'homeowner' mower and a 'commercial' mower, but then this is just a walk-behind mower and it originally cost over $2,800!
It has a Kawasaki 12.5 HP engine and a 36" double (overlapping) blade mower, so the blades must be 'timed' and they are kept that way with a toothed timing belt.
I removed the mower deck first thing, shoveled out all the acorns and pinecones and muscled it onto my H/D dolly so I can more it around easily. The machine itself is up on jack-stands and a couple heavy pieces of timber for support. I removed the sparkplug and pumped some Kroil and Mystery Oil into the cylinder before trying to turn it over with the repaired pull starter. Then as I had been told they "thought" there was a valve problem, I removed the valve cover to make sure nothing was broken. The valves open and close properly and the engine turns over smoothly, however, I could not get a spark. It has an ignition key (which was frozen, but Kroil eventually freed it up) and what I 'think' is a kill-switch which was also frozen, but I freed that up too. However, I don't know if the electrical contacts in either of those switches are working, so that may be the reason I'm not getting any spark.. I hope so! It has no battery, but does have electronic ignition, so there may be a more serious problem there. There may also be some safety switch I am unaware of that would prevent the ignition from firing, there does seem to be a lot of wiring for a machine with no battery system.
I'll be posting questions and details on the JD Forum.. So I would appreciate any members with experience on one of these machines chiming in there.. It's going to take more than Sea Foam and a transaxle rebuild to get this beast operating again!
Roger B
