Owned a Honda mower for 20 years and replaced it with this model which is nothing like the old Honda. Takes 4-6 pulls to start, hard to use variable speed control, i think it can use more RPM's and worse thing is the resistance pulling it backwards. Looking for opinions or fixes. Thanks in advance.
Honda Mower HRR216VYA
- Thread starter JohnAM
- Start date
You may have carb issues. 4-6 pulls isn normal. The good news is the carbs on these should be pretty cheap if you just want to buy a new one... like 25bux or something. You can try cleaning it well.
The resistance pulling backwards is a design flaw unfortunately. Don’t believe the YouTube videos that tell you cleaning the pinion gears will help - it won’t. Gunk gets in the bushings where the driveshaft goes through to the wheels. This adds resistance while pulling backwards but it also adds drag to the self propelled system when going forward. When bad enough this causes more heat and wear in the transmission as well as you lose some mowing power. You can clean them out and re-grease them, but it will come back. So far the best fix that I’ve come up with is to add an extra dust seal and convert it to needle bearings. It’s too soon for me to call it complete success but thus far it’s doing awesome... better than new and no signs of getting worse like it normally would. Below is the link that documents what I did if you want to give it a shot or use it as inspiration for something better.
www.lawnmowerforum.com
The resistance pulling backwards is a design flaw unfortunately. Don’t believe the YouTube videos that tell you cleaning the pinion gears will help - it won’t. Gunk gets in the bushings where the driveshaft goes through to the wheels. This adds resistance while pulling backwards but it also adds drag to the self propelled system when going forward. When bad enough this causes more heat and wear in the transmission as well as you lose some mowing power. You can clean them out and re-grease them, but it will come back. So far the best fix that I’ve come up with is to add an extra dust seal and convert it to needle bearings. It’s too soon for me to call it complete success but thus far it’s doing awesome... better than new and no signs of getting worse like it normally would. Below is the link that documents what I did if you want to give it a shot or use it as inspiration for something better.
Can't Pull Mower Backwards - HRR216VLA to bearing conversion
Edit: 2 Year update 10/18/2021 - the needle bearings worked great for 2 years. I disassembled for re-greasing and found that they HAVE caused some minor damage and mushrooming to the drive shaft especially on the left side where the transmission sits and pulls against the shaft to tension the...
www.lawnmowerforum.com