I visited my dad yesterday and he was excited to show off his new HRX217VYA mower. I couldn't help but notice that lying near the user manual was the bottle of oil that Honda sends to put in the mower BEFORE use. When I asked my dad about the oil he said he checked the oil and there was already oil in the mower so he didn't add any. When I checked the "dip stick", he was correct there was oil. However, I know the mower gets tested and ships with any oil that didn't drain from the factory. When I emptied the oil there was about 3-4oz and that's it. I added the correct about of oil and everything seems to be running fine. **Edit - I forgot to add that it takes him about an hour to cut the grass so it had about 60min of runtime with the factory oil.
My question - Do you think any damage was done? If so, to what extent? Should I run any engine oil treatment through or something like Sta-Bil Fogging Oil? Or am I just overthinking it? He said the mower was about $750 after tax so I want to make sure I do everything I can for him.
Thank you all in advance!
#2
Scrubcadet10
i'd say if it's not knocking and clanging, with the correct amount of the correct weight oil in it now, it should be O.K.
Good thing you visited your father. The dipstick on a Honda is just that...a DIPSTICK. You do not thread the dipstick in to check the oil. Remove it, wipe it, Dip it. With the dipstick threaded in, it most likely did show that there was oil in the engine, but that is just residual oil remaining after the engine is test ran at the factory. They never are able to remove all of the oil. The 12oz bottle of oil that came with the mower + the residual oil will typically bring the oil level to the 'safe' level.
As Scrubcadet10 said, it it not making any unusual sounds, it should be fine.
Yeah, I agree that you are likely ok. Honda ... well ... does things different. The capacity of the engine is 18-20 oz. but when one changes the oil, he is only supposed to add about 12. The difference is residual that somehow doesn't come out when the engine is tipped over for draining. Go figure. Thus, I suppose you still had more like 6- 8 oz., not ideal, but enough to probably save your bacon.
