Old lawn mowers

In this example the old mower is a Snapper from 1985. I was given this mower yesterday as a non-running parts machine. It is complete except for a missing air cleaner assembly. The prior owners were my in-laws so I knew the overall condition of the machine. Today I am cutting grass with it. I will post details about this trash to treasure tale a little later.

Please do. I have 3 old push mowers outside. I want to use them to make at least 1 good one I can use at the farm in places where I can't use a riding mower.

dizzy wrote:Please do.  I have 3 old push mowers outside.  I want to use them to make at least 1 good one I can use at the farm in places where I can't use a riding mower.

I'm not sure this will help much, the previous owner had tinkered with it and made it non-running. If you will pose this issue as a question topic in this section, we can go into details and work through the push mowers together though.

So on to the saga of the free riding mower...currently it sits with a broken belt, and still in need of the air cleaner. These items will be taken care of in the next few days. While it's down it's getting a good bath, oil change, greasing and some sealant put in the old tires. Also on the need to inspect (and likely replace) are the bearings in the deck. My FIL is of the opinion that a piece of steel or a machine does not know what it is, and what ever you do to it will not matter, it will still do what it should. When it comes to carburetors and the governor linkage this is definitely not the case. The mower had started running badly and needed the carburetor cleaned. Usually this is easy on these old machines. He put things back wrong, and in addition to not having the linkage (the little rods and springs) in the right places, he used what ever spring he had laying around. ( "it don't know no better...") After three years he gave up and bought a new mower. I had offered several times to look at the little snapper for him but was told no. MIL called the other day to ask if I would clean out their gutters, and would I haul off the old snapper, and her fathers old tiller for them. I said sure, but asked if I could keep the tiller and mower. They agreed, but FIL was laughing and said neither one of those pieces of ... umm lets say stuff... run. No problem, I like to tinker with old machines. So when I got them home and unloaded, I started troubleshooting by draining out the old gas, and putting about 1/2 a tank of fresh gas in each. The mower first... pulled the choke on, made sure the key was on, and pulled the rope easy and slow a few times to feel the bump bump of the compression stroke. A few good pulls and all I could get was a few sputters. I grabbed a can of starting fluid and sprayed into the carburetor (just a couple short spurts) and pulled the rope hard and fast. The motor came to life, ran slow and died. So that meant the compression was good enough, and the spark plug was firing, but fuel delivery was an issue. I looked closely at the throttle and governor linkage (MIL had warned me) and discovered the throttle locked in the low idle position, and one of the rods had been bent into a "U" shape. Straightened everything out there (by trial and error mostly) and tried again. This time it ran with enough power to drive itself around, but would not "pull" the blades at proper speed, and ran rough intermittently. I could actually feel fuel being spit out of the carburetor when it was running rough. So I backed the air adjustment screw out a half a turn. This helped a little, but did not cure the problem of not having enough power to run the blades. I turned the fuel metering screw in until the engine died and then backed it out 1/2 turn. Bingo, we have power, and it starts like a dream...but it ran a little hot. I backed the fuel metering screw out about 1/8 turn more, and was able to mow with it for four hours, then the belt broke.

So for now, other than changing the oil, and getting an air cleaner assembly the engine work is done.

Here's a couple shots of the mower after mowing for four hours, parked in the barn between the bike and the tractor, behind my tiller, and the big Cub Cadet that DW was mowing with.









to be continued I'm sure.

Glad it was that easy to get going.

That's not a bad looking little mower.

it's always been stored under roof, or inside when not in use...like I said I knew the overall condition of the mower. Definitely a candidate for an engine swap if worse came to worse.

There are a lot of folks out there that love the old mowers.  We are seeing them on Craigslist for sale as "Mudders".  Pretty cool use of an old mower if you ask me.    

 

LOL "Rednecks gone Wild" would make a good alternate title for those videos

Fun looking idea though