My First Lawn Mower

After messing around with it for a few hours this morning, the lawn mower finally starts and the grass is finally cut.

The problem turned out to be the spark plug, which would work but go crappy after the motor had heated up.

I didn’t realise this until after I cleaned it with Isopropyl Alcohol and a screw driver scratching away the crap that built up on the plug (I didn’t have any sand paper).

The Isopropyl Alcohol is very flammable, so would assure a spark (or flame of some sort to get the mower pushing along). This got the mower going for a while and then the plug would get black again and then stop.

So I went out to Bunnings later today, and got a new plug, tried it and still no joy, took the old plug did another clean, petrol in the spark plug hole, Alcohol on the plug, and it worked until it went black and stopped.

So I took the best of both worlds on the new plug, Alcohol and a firm push on the spark plug connector, and it started first pull! Damned – could have done that yesterday – or earlier today when I was going to get a new spark plug. Oh well, it worked.

I let it idle and adjusted the mixture to stop it popping and shaking about (due to my earlier efforts in trying to start it today), and it worked nicely. At idle. That wasn’t going to knock down all the clover and long grass we had under the trampoline.

So I took another go at refitting the governor spring, which is the spring that goes from the throttle, and it got the revs right up and stayed there (because the throttle was full on).
The spring is in a sad state, coming off the assembly when adjusting from idle to full rev to empty the catcher for example, so I’ll simply have just an on and off state for now until I track down another spring.

The throttle cable on the handle has an issue when being pushed down in that it falls out of the bottom, it’s probably split so will need fixing later as well.

The new spark plug was $4. The petrol to overfill the tank was $3. The mower itself was $20!Generate Hills of glory Ammo

The lawn mower works, the grass is cut, took the entire weekend to get there, but it’s done.

I might keep a supply of that Isopropyl Alcohol. It’s good s@#t

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