Repairs JD LA115 newbie - Should I clean this out?

Hi all,

Please forgive my ignorance. I bought my first home last August, and the previous owner was kind enough to leave their LA115 behind for me. Needless to say I don't know a whole lot about riding mowers. I've watched a few YouTube videos here and there and just recently changed the battery and oil. That's the extent of my experience.

One thing that strikes my attention when I pop the hood is this:



Not sure what the name of that mesh part is, but there is quite a bit of grass packed up around the perimeter as you can see. Is this something I should attempt to clean out, or is it normal and I can just ignore it?

I appreciate any help!

Not only do you need to clean that out. You need to pull the plastic cover off the engine. Not that hard to do . 4 bolts I think. Then clean the cooling fins well . if the screen is that bad the cooling fins are too. Not doing this will cause engine to overheat and blow it up. If you can't do this find someone who can ASAP like before you mow the yard again.

RDA.Lawns said:

Not only do you need to clean that out. You need to pull the plastic cover off the engine. Not that hard to do . 4 bolts I think. Then clean the cooling fins well . if the screen is that bad the cooling fins are too. Not doing this will cause engine to overheat and blow it up. If you can't do this find someone who can ASAP like before you mow the yard again.

Click to expand...

Yikes. Thanks for the response! I think I can probably handle it. Would rather at least try before paying someone else.

John Deere have all their very comprehensive owners manuals available for free on line if you live in continential USA.
If you don't have an air compressor, get one.
Ride ons leak air from the tyres regularly and small variations in tyre pressure makes a big difference to the cut.
Grass blows out easily but if you try to wash it , it forms a hard packed wet goo that rusts everything in no time flat.

An update for everyone that cares.

I ended up attempting to take the plastic cover off of my engine, only to realize that one of the four bolts I needed to remove had a mostly stripped head. Also happened to be the bolt right next to the gas filter, which means I had little room to work with. I tried a bunch of different things to get the bolt out, but ended up just stripping it more.

I could mostly lift the plastic cover at this point with three of the four bolts removed. I had the sudden revelation to just see how powerful my tiny little shop vac is, and try just blowing the grass out towards the ground and out of the cooling fins. Thing worked like a charm! No need for a air compressor in my eyes; turns out my tiny little vac had enough power to remove all of the built up **** all over the JD.

TL;DR: Struggled with a stripped bolt, ended up just blowing away all of the dried grass with a small shop vac. Thanks everyone for the advice and help. :thumbsup: