Recent content by Danl99

Without a link, that doesn't help.

Yeah, I saw that, but some employee at a garden repair shop told me otherwise. I'll presume that to be a myth.

I routinely use StaBil to increase the lifetime of my gasoline in cans. I was just told that StaBil DOESN'T WORK for gas with ethanol. The point being that ethanol absorbs water. Now, my cans are sealed, so the ethanol in my gas isn't going to absorb a lot of water. Now as if I leave my gas...

Geez, guys. I TOLD you what happened. MOWER FIXED. CASE CLOSED.

I've got good service folks. Diagnosis reported above.

Diagnosis - broken compression relief valve and damaged camshaft. Replaced camshaft. Evidently not a very common issue.

I do aerospace engineering, not gas engine engineering. That's why I'm here, because I don't know how everything about how to troubleshoot a gas engine and I thought I might get some help. I haven't really heard any good explanations for my problem, though. I'll head over to a different forum...

OK, sounds like we're done. I was hoping for some useful advice here. Ther seems to be some reluctance to giving that.

Note sure if this info is useful, but right now, with the motor "stuck", I remove the spark plug, and the rod, when inserted reaches 2.0 inches below the plug seat. I suppose I could jostle it a bit, and get the motor started, and then try it again after that. Do I roll the flywheel by rotating...

When this first happened, I assumed there was a jam at the blade, so I turned the mower on its side, saw there was no jam, and rotated the blade by hand. The blade rotated just fine.

But, as I said, I was able to get it to run, and it ran smoothly for 15 minutes. You'd think a mechanical failure wouldn't come and go, and specifically go away when I pull the spark plug. Tried that several times. Spark plug in, CAN'T pull cord. Spark plug out, CAN pull cord.

Not sure what that means. Please explain carefully. What do I do with a rod?

Well, that's depressing. After getting it started, and letting it run smoothly for 15 minutes, when I try to start it back up, the hydra-lock is still there. You'd think that running it for a while would clear out any problem, but that's evidently not the case.

No, it pulls easily with the plug removed.

Thanks. I managed to get it started, and have wired the safety handle to keep it going for a while. Is that likely to eventually clear out the problem? It's running smoothly, with no smoke coming out.