Greetings,
When I bought this mower 11 years ago, the dealer praised Honda mowers as the best - mainly because they use ball bearings in the drive wheels. Although it's 3-speed self propelled, I used it most of that time without self propel (by pushing it, for extra exercise), and it's only in the last 4 years that my wife has been using the self propelled feature, with only a few 1-hour lawn cuts per season. So the transmission stopped working, and I took it apart to look see. There's a friction clutch with ribbed metal "Clutch Plates," but they're backed up by plastic washers, one of which melted. There's thus no more throw left in the clutch movement. Why did this melt? After such minimal use? There was only little oil in the transmission when I opened it. I never noticed that there was an oil leak, and I'm wondering if they just didn't put enough in. Such melting may have been avoided if there was enough oil for cooling.
To say the least, I'm very disappointed in many things about this contraption. Why design a friction clutch assembly with plastic for key parts? Why glue the two halves of the transmission casing together, even with the glue line running through the joining screws? Yeah, the drive wheels have ball bearings, but they are held into place by plastic housings that are spot melted in place, and both housings have two or three cracks in them. Why a design that makes disassembly unduly difficult, using a smorgasbord of different screw heads, including Torx? Why not put in an oil drain plug so that we could keep track of the oil level and cleanliness. Now that I've looked under the hood, I see many problems with Honda lawnmowers: mainly designed-in obsolescence and user-unfriendly designs.
I know very little about other lawnmower makers. Can anyone suggest other makes that don't have such disappointing features?
Thanks,
Tom
When I bought this mower 11 years ago, the dealer praised Honda mowers as the best - mainly because they use ball bearings in the drive wheels. Although it's 3-speed self propelled, I used it most of that time without self propel (by pushing it, for extra exercise), and it's only in the last 4 years that my wife has been using the self propelled feature, with only a few 1-hour lawn cuts per season. So the transmission stopped working, and I took it apart to look see. There's a friction clutch with ribbed metal "Clutch Plates," but they're backed up by plastic washers, one of which melted. There's thus no more throw left in the clutch movement. Why did this melt? After such minimal use? There was only little oil in the transmission when I opened it. I never noticed that there was an oil leak, and I'm wondering if they just didn't put enough in. Such melting may have been avoided if there was enough oil for cooling.
To say the least, I'm very disappointed in many things about this contraption. Why design a friction clutch assembly with plastic for key parts? Why glue the two halves of the transmission casing together, even with the glue line running through the joining screws? Yeah, the drive wheels have ball bearings, but they are held into place by plastic housings that are spot melted in place, and both housings have two or three cracks in them. Why a design that makes disassembly unduly difficult, using a smorgasbord of different screw heads, including Torx? Why not put in an oil drain plug so that we could keep track of the oil level and cleanliness. Now that I've looked under the hood, I see many problems with Honda lawnmowers: mainly designed-in obsolescence and user-unfriendly designs.
I know very little about other lawnmower makers. Can anyone suggest other makes that don't have such disappointing features?
Thanks,
Tom