I recently purchased a used Honda lawnmower, Harmony 215SX, from a friend at work for $50. My fiancee said that was too much for a used lawnmower but it looks in good shape and is rear wheel drive with a 2 speed trans. Along with the mower, my friend also gave me the service manual, new airfilter, and the 2 carburetor gaskets I might need to do the carb clean it required since it had been sitting for over a year. I cleaned the carb, changed the spark plug and engine oil, retorqued the blade bolts and other minor tune up stuff. It fired up first pull but then wouldn't run off of choke so I looked online for advice and thanks to help from this forum I figured out that I hadn't cleaned the slow speed jet sufficiently so I went back, did that plus a couple of other adjustments and it runs pretty good now. I still feel like the rpm difference between the fast and slow throttle settings should be greater, however when I adjust the throttle cable for higher rpm in fast setting the governer will flutter the rpm between stalling and high rpm and occasionally stall out like it isn't getting enough fuel. If I disconnect the governor linkage though and hold the Carb butterfly wide open I get the rpm I would expect for wide open so I am not sure if I actually need a bigger main jet or not. Sure seems weird that the difference between slow and fast is only a couple thousand revs but it mows the grass great so I am thinking that I should just stop tinkering. That's my story, any advice or comments of the positive nature are most welcome. Thanks!
#2
bwdbrn1
Does yours have two screws under the carb body? They are part of the control plate. One of those adjusts the choke activation, the other works on the high rpm settings. If you have access to a tach, use it to check the actual RPMs. Idle should be 2100 rpm +or- 150 rpm and high speed should be 3,150 to 3,300 rpm.
#3
robert@honda
Here are the engine speed adjustment procedures from the shop manual.
Use a tachometer; if you try and do it "by ear" you'll either get it too slow (poor cut quality) or too fast (shorten the engine life, danger of fragmented blade).
