Another Engine

 

This is an engine. OK, so it's a picture of an engine. The great thing about engines is they generally work. Some years ago I saw the movie His Girl Friday. Rosalind Russel goes on a tant about Made For Use. The  basic idea is that everything produced is produced for a purpose and for me, engines have a purpose.  That purpose is to run. Frankly, I don't care much if they do anything beyond that.

This weekend's adventures included mowing the lawn. Usually this involves running the weed whacker, picking up the dog poop, and pushing the big mower around. If the grass is not too tall, this can take less than 2 hours.

This is my mower. The nice folks at equipmentlocator.com have the same mower so I snarfed their picture.

Anywho, the mower is about 7 years old. I bought it used from my friend Rick. It has needed only minor repairs since I got it. Much joy!

This weekend I had another opportunity to use my mower-fixup-checklist. (See previous blog entry). This time, it was fuel.

There were actually three things wrong with the mower.

1. It's hard to shift gears
2. The mower stalls after running for a few minutes
3. It's hard to start.

The first problem was a case of mistaken belt routing. One of the drive belts was routed around around the wrong spindle. It was an easy fix once found.

The second problem took some sleuthing. The spark plug was clean and unfouled. The engine did not start when choked  or unchoked - it didn't even sputter. I pulled the bottom off the carb and voila - no gas. The tank had gas so obviously the problem was somewhere between the tank and the carb. (You'll learn later that the problem was actually the operator.)

Having narrowed the problem, it was a simple matter of take-apart, and re-assemble, until the fuel resumes flow. The fuel line was pinched inside a clamp, I loosened the clamp and all was well. Now the fun part is that the clamp was mis-installed by me some months ago. The interesting question is why this was only a problem now. I suspect the fuel line has been swelling with age and the pinched section got more and more constricted over time.

With the fuel line repaired, the mower started on the 1st pull. Nice.

The third problem is still not resolved. I found out after trying to start the mower the day after the above repairs. It just would not start. Marathons take the gas out of my legs, pull starting mowers takes the gas out of the rest of me.

I suspect the starting issue is related to a dirty air filter cuz one I pulled the air filter off, the mower started right up. That's something to investigate further next weekend.