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I am in the market for a new walk behind self propelled mower. I would prefer one with a non Briggs & Stratton engine since they are no longer in business, but more importantly, I would like one with a manual choke. I have about had it with mowers with automatic chokes. Do they still make mowers with manual chokes, and does anyone perhaps have a recommendation if the do?

First, Briggs is not out of business. Second, most push mowers build today do not have manual chokes, you’ll have to do a lot of searching to find one with, especially in the low to medium price range.

@Rivets

You are quite correct. They have reorganized and are currently in business after bankruptcy. As a result, let me rephrase my statement. I would prefer one with a non Briggs & Stratton engine for a variety of reasons.

In regards to the manual choke, I figured walk behind self propelled mowers with a manual choke would be few and far between, and also that many of the on-line descriptions would not say one way or the other on that subject. I was hoping by that posting, someone who knew of such a beast might reply indicating that it existed, and might even give an overall opinion of the mower if they had actually had used it. A long shot for sure, but better odds than not posting the question at all.

Mowers with manual chokes will not pass EPA regulations
However every mower shop sells universal choke cables and it is not hard to fit one to a mower because "the auto choke broke & no one had one in stock"officer .

@bertsmobile1

Well that explains why I cannot find a manual choke mower. Every the other piece of equipment I own has a manual choke and I had no idea why I could not find at least one current mower with one. The time I have spent looking for such a mower is gone, but at least I won't waste any more time looking. Thank you very much for setting me straight. It is much appreciated.

You are more than welcome
Those outside the industry have no idea about the idiot EPA regulations that get handed down on a daily basis.
I fit a lot of hand chokes ,well perhaps 4 or 5 a year mainly because it costs $ 50 for me to do that and $ 60 for most auto choke actuators and very few of them seem to last more than 3 or 4 years

I have a rear wheel drive gasoline fueled Toro that has been most reliable. That said, the current trend is to EV.

sgkent said:

I have a rear wheel drive gasoline fueled Toro that has been most reliable. That said, the current trend is to EV.

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Maybe at your house. Battery mowers offer me nothing over a gas engine. They are what I grew up with and use today.

I recall one neighbor had one of those corded push mowers LOL. She and he would fight that cord and waste more time on it than cutting the yard. Deck was a whopping 16" maybe.

The manufactures, electric companies, and environmentalists are trying to shove the battery powered mowers down our throats. Battery is great for those have small jobs but don't see it in my future for cutting 6+ acres at a time.

Beside battery power equipment causes more pollution than they are trying telling the end-user about.

It like my local electric company putting in a 1100 acres solar farm and then want us to pay extra for electricity generated by it. They use so much weed killer that they are polluting the local ground water. Also no local wildlife can even live on that 1100 acres. It is just another case of corporate greed destroying our world just to make a profit.

StarTech said:

The manufactures, electric companies, and environmentalists are trying to shove the battery powered mowers down our throats. Battery is great for those have small jobs but don't see it in my future for cutting 6+ acres at a time.

Beside battery power equipment causes more pollution than they are trying telling the end-user about.

It like my local electric company putting in a 1100 acres solar farm and then want us to pay extra for electricity generated by it. They use so much weed killer that they are polluting the local ground water. Also no local wildlife can even live on that 1100 acres. It is just another case of corporate greed destroying our world just to make a profit.

Click to expand...

It's all about all those federal and state laws against price gouging. See, in the US, we have laws against it. But today, we all see it in everything with a dollar amount attached to it.

Just 2 more years lord...... 2 more years. Amen

ONE company, that is overseas, stops making baby formula. Say that again to yourself. What happened?

These CEO's know how to manipulate the US customer. Toilet paper outage? WTF

This is all a democratic comedy show right? Tonight on Comedy Central, Joe Biden.......

Back to lawn mowers LOL.

What a lot people don't understand the presidents are not the ones that controls things in the US government, they can only ask for things to be done. They are just scapegoats. It is the Congress controls most of the things which is right evenly split and one side wants to do things and the other keeps saying no damn way you are going to do anything just because we don't want you to do things. As long they keeping fighting each other instead trying to work together we are going to stay in the mess we are in. Corporations are taking advantage of this infighting and putting the screws to all of us.

And it don't help a bit that other countries like Russia and China are causing problems too.

BTW I have yet to see a penny of the stimulus money that was authorized under Trump. Nor have any of the stimulus money authorized under Biden have been seen. Heck the Idiot Ran Service (IRS) has yet to even bothered to process my tax forms for the last two years. So this coming year I will owe some and they can just suck wind as I am not sending in a payment. I just file without payment. Then they will probably start threatening me for their failures to do their job.

My mistake was to borrow money based the initial claim of a payment as I need it to invest in my company. At least I didn't depend on the other payments as I was already stung by the first one.

Oh BTW we currently have a tampon shortage so women now having sanitary problems. I think if all the women just go on strike things will start getting done.

Opinions are that. Opinions. If you live in a state that is outlawing ICE engines it isn't going to mean diddly squat when you can't get a gas replacement, or parts without becoming some kind of felon if you import them. All my pieces of power equipment except a weed wacker are gasoline powered, and most of them 15 - 25 years old. As I said, my Toro mower has been excellent, it is a pull cord start. My next door neighbor has the same but it has electric start and his has been flawless too. My Toro starts on the first pull even after 14 years. It puts out a small puff of grey smoke (oil) when it starts but it has since day 1.

As Star mentioned
Governments do not run countries
Companies run countries unless it is a dictatorship or communist country
And companies now days are run by the large funds managers who will vote any or all directors on of off a board if the company does provide the dividend they demand
The rest of it is just a circus performance to pretend that some sort of democracy is in practice.
By LAW a board & the executive are bound to act in the best interest of the SHARE HOLDERS not you the customer and if they do not do this then vultures in $20,000 suits will launch a legal claim against them .

Laws were written to protect the assets of the rich , not for the benefit of the poor .
In the USA from Regan on every administration has watered down consumer protections to the benefit of the megga wealthy .
Classic example is the ban on IC engines that will do nothing but take money out of your pocket & put it into the Waltons / Lowes off shore tax havens

As for energy, we knew back in the 70's when I was in college that this was going to happen but the megga rich did not want to spend any money and had not made enough money on the capital they had invested so they turned climate pollution into a left vs right political arguement and now we are reaping the rewards of allowing them to do that . Originally the right were advocating for the change because they could see the massive costs that would be incurred and that those costs would drastically multiply the longer we delayed actions

There is no arguement that coal fired power stations have to be wound down
They should have all been closed down by now & converted into hydrogen powered generators with the hydrogen produced by electrolysis of water via solar cells if you wanted to keep the existing distribution ( ie selling ) grid .
AT the UNSW there was one of these units on the roof of almost every building and they produced enough power to run the lighting in all of them with power to spare and this was back in the late 60's early 70's when the solar technology was in it's infancy .

But this research was canned because it would render the government run ( back then ) power stations unprofitable

While we can switch to "renewable" energy supplies to do it you have to drastically reduce power consumption during the renewable dead zone ≈ 8pm to 5am and the first step to doing that is to scrap every thing with a glowing element
Can you see the energy police kicking in doors and marching off with all your radient heaters , stove tops & hot water tanks ?

And the lie turned into a truth about solar electricity being cheaper is true but only if you use no electricity whatsoever after peak solar which is around 2 hours after sunrise & before sunset .
Now because you can not switch a coal fired power station on & off at will, like a gas fired open turbine the power generated after dark has the running cost of the plant at idle for the daylight hours added on top of the direct generation costs for the power used overnight so that makes it near 3 to 4 times the price per KW that it would have been per KW if it was running full power all day , so adding all of the renewables has actually pushed the total power prices up.