Bought this mower used about 5 years ago. Use it on my acreage to trim around trees and bag leaves for composting. Last fall, noticed oil leak in garage after mowing and guessed maybe a lower seal was worn out. Took off recoil, gas tank and flywheel...oil leak starts at top of engine and flows down. Flywheel is spinning oil all over the inside of the tank plastic.
Took off the breather cover and cleaned up the surface seat and the gasket, tightened up the cover and initially leak appeared to be gone. Bagged leaves for a couple hours today and leak is back - although not as bad. I will order a new breather gasket and bearing seal for the top of the crank. My question is this just a simple leak on an old mower or is this a symptom of a larger repair that needs attention?
I have used this mower a lot and it had already lived a few lived before I got it. Really is a great mower for bagging up yard waste. Thank you for any thoughts you have on the subject.
Last year I had an oil leak on an HR215 because of a bad upper engine crankshaft seal on a GX140 engine. The seal was difficult to remove because it moved downward into the engine and was actually just located below the engine case. I never did remove the old seal and just placed the new seal into the position that the old seal should have been in, which is on the crankshaft and fit nicely into the engine case. After installing the new seal, the old seal was right beneath the new seal. There are now 2 seals in place, and the mower doesn't leak oil any more with approx. 10-mowings completed last year after the oil seal work.
