This is the story of a $300- Craig's list riding lawn mower named Smokey and my attempts to keep it running. Let's start with a little back story, shall we?
My wife and I just purchased a "new" house in the Jovita area of Auburn. Nice, but weird house set on .71 acres, much of which is lawn and in constant need of mowing. My wife had the brilliant idea to purchase a riding lawn mower on the cheap off of Craig's List. After much searching, we finally settled on a Toro 14.5 HXL for $300-. Yep, my wife found us a riding lawn mower for $300- when most of them were going for at least a grand. We were proud. Rented a Uhaul and picked it up, nice guy even showed me how to run it and take a little trip 'round the yard. Got her home and drove her into the garage.
Weekend rolls around and it's time for my first mow! Can't wait. Fire her up, engage the blades take her down the hill (yes, I don't know why I went down first), and she died. Wouldn't start. Then it started to rain. Pushed her under a tree (did I mention I still haven't figured out how to put her in "neutral"?) to at least keep the worst of the rain off while I figured out what to do. Called my brother-in-law, Dave, in Tennessee. He knows how to fix everything. Gave me some sage wisdom: "check the oil." Did. It was dry. Bone dry. I don't mean low, I mean there was crusty black stuff on the bottom tip of the dipstick dry. That can't be good. Filled her with oil, waited for her to cool down, and sure enough she started! Yay! This time I got smart. Drove her straight back into the garage, shut her down and called the other guru in this story, Cody, for more help.
"What else should I check besides the oil while I have her in the garage?" Says I.
"Let's take a look at the air filter." says he.
He procedes to unscrew the filter cap, pulls of the cover. Low and behold, some sort of rodent has decided that the air filter was a perfect place to set up a domicile. Fluffy bits of detritus everywhere. Now I'm not a mechanically minded kid of guy, I was kind of impressed that I figured out how to put oil in it by myself, but even I know there's not supposed to be a mouse nest in your engine.
Having cleaned that out, he lays down on the ground and procedes to tell me that the belts look good. Glad he said so, 'cause I don't know what good or bad ones look like. Do now. Thanks for the lesson, Sensei. We fire her up and run her for a bit. Shut her down and check the oil. It's black. Black like the color of the stuff that bubbled up from the ground at the beginning of the "Beverly Hillbillies." (Yep, guess I'm dating myself with that one.) Did I tell you I'd just dumped a quart of brand new oil in it? It came in a black container, but it was kind of a very light tan when it went in.
"We should probably do an oil change." says he. Knew that one. Fortunately he actually knew how to do it and showed me where the oil plug was. He pulled out his oil dump pan and we let her run. This oil was so black and opaque Sauron would be proud to have it flowing down Mount Doom itself. Call it a rinse cycle. Put her back together, he checks a few other dohickies, and tells me she should be good to go. By this time, it's unfortunately too late and dark to mow, so it will have to wait.
Mowing round two actually went well, except for one small thing. Every time she leaned the slightest bit to the left she blew a HUGE cloud of blue smoke, sputtered and almost died. Did I mention this property is about half on an incline of 25%? Needless to say, it's impossible to mow this yard without tipping her quite a bit in one direction or another, especially when going around the fruit orchard we have in the back. Leanna even came out to check if I'd set myself on fire once or twice the smoke was that thick. The old girl (mower, that is, not L) actually managed to finish the job, despite the smoke, however.
Having completed one successful mow of all three yards, she earned her nickname, "Smokey." My wife is a graduate of the University of Tennessee, and if you're not aware, while their official mascot is the Volunteer, everyone really knows it's all about their bluetick coonhound, Smokey. We'd even had my mom make our dogs a cape to watch the games with us. (Still need a sticker, too.)
Mow three did not go nearly as well. Got the back done with the same smoking, but she died as soon as I got to the side yard. Tried turning her over, starter motor sounded like it was cranking, but no joy from the engine. Another call to Cody later and I found myself changing a spark plug. Check off something else I can do now. Old plug total black cap over spark gap. Couldn't believe it ran as long as it did. Ran great again, though, yay!
I'm realizing I forgot to mention my first solo repair on Smokey. When she came to us, the previous owner had knocked off the mulching chute covering the grass port on the deck. I carefully drilled some holes in it and zip tied it back on. Worked great through all three mows. However, at this point, the thatch is starting to get a little thick, so Leanna decides we need a bagger. True to form, she finds a cheap, "like new" one on Craig's list that has a "universal attachment," $250-. Having looked at the back of the mower, I know there's two holes placed just to bolt on a bagging attachement, as well as the tow pin. Should be great, right? Universal is universal, right? Not even close to lining up. Sick L on the web again, and $80- later we've ordered the "universal bracket attaching mount" for Smokey. Couldn't wait for it to get here. Finally arrives and the bracket bolts on like a dream. Holes on the mower line up perfectly with the holes on the bracket and create a very nice vertical mounting surface. Grab the universal attachment bracket from the bagger assembly and guess what? Universal in 1997 (L figured out what year she was built in the process of ordering parts based on her serial number) is of course different from universal in 2013. Fortunately my work has awesome guys who have a fully equipped shop in the boiler room. Robin was kind enough to drill holes to make the universal brackets actually work together. YAY!!! the bagger is successfully attached with only a small gap between the bagger chute and the deck. Duct tape to the rescue, as well as a little extra to make sure the chute stays together because I've had to extend it a few extra inches. Gotta love a mower held together with duct tape and zip ties.
Take her out for a spin. Looks like it's working (there's some grass in the bags) until I stop and check the chute. Full of grass. Dang. Yeah it was a little heavy, but this was probably about as dry as grass gets in the northwest since it hadn't rained in a week. HELP? Talked to some folk at work who explained that you need "high lift" blades. Mulching blades are essentially shaped to blow the mulch down. Lifting blades are shaped exactly the oposite to lift it up. Switch to those and you should be good! Spend some time searching on the internet, and can't really find the parts. Table the problem for a while. Mower is running "fine" mulching the grass, and these huge clouds of blue smoke are really ridiculous, even with trying to avoid tipping her to port. CODY?!?!?!
So some time passes, I get a few more good mows in and Cody comes over again. He's actually helped several other times to this point, but I've condensed a bit for narrative sake. It's a good thing he works cheap. Still owe him a ton of barbecue. (Few extra calls to Dave, as well.) So Cody traces the problem to a small black hose that apparently connects the oil pan to the air filter housing on the left side of the engine. At pressure when leaning to the left, it blows excess oil straight into the air filter, causing huge billowing clouds of blue smoke (and hence coating the spark plug in black carbonite. If only it were as easy to get off as it apparently was for Leah and Han.) "Ah," says he, "What if we swiveled this hose around and set up something to catch the excess oil?" (Okay, maybe these direct quotes aren't exactly what he said, but the idea is definitely there.)
"Great," says I, "What should we use?"
"Any sort of can that would fit in this little spot here should do." says he, pointing to a small area. I know exactly what kind of can would fit in that area. All those hours of Tetris (again dating myself) and dog training are paying off! It's a small area about three and a half inches wide, three inches tall and an inch and a half deep. Anyone? Think rectangular and blue with yellow writing. Yep, you guessed it, Hawaii's favorite lunchmeat and the one thing Doppler will literally jump through hoops for, SPAM! Yes, I have a Spam can zip tied into my engine and it actually serves a legitimate function. Sure enough, we fire her up, I take her for a test drive and tip her to the left as far as my hill will allow. No more blue smoke. Still some smoke, but not nearly the issues we were having. Yay, Cody! (Why is he ROTFLOL? It works and it fit perfectly in the spot.)
So she's running pretty good now, but still every time I check the oil it's black as pitch and she still does quite a bit of smoking even if it isn't as bad as before the installation of my favorite catch basin. Have to empty about 2.5 ounces of oil from it with a turkey baster every time I mow, but I can live with that having purchased my own oil disposal container. Figure I may as well not put black oil back in the engine, so replace it with fresh before each mow. I'd have probably continued on like this indefinitely, she is working and that's more than I can probably hope for given the circumstances. Fortunately this project has started to occupy Jedi Master Cody's idle thoughts. "Smell the dipstick," says he.
"Smells like burnt oil and gas." says I. He comes over with a fuel shut off valve. We install it and do YAOC (yet another oil change).
"Shut off the fuel and run it dry before letting her sit." Says he. "Let's see if that keeps the gas from leaking into the oil pan which can cause it to thin out and and burn in the engine."
"Okaly Dokaly" says I. YASNIL (yet again something new I've learned). Couple mows later and the oil still smells worse than the inside of my Big Green Egg and a Chevron station.
"I was afraid of that" says he. "Probably means your piston seals are going, which means rebuilding the engine, or just letting it die of natural causes. You might be able to run her for a couple of years like this." I can think of worse things. At least she's working. I'll table that one for a bit and start in on the other problem sitting on that table, the $250- bagger that's collecting dust in the garage. Remember that one?
Call the local Toro repair guy in Federal Way. Explain the issue. He tells me to take the deck of and bring it in. Whoa. "Should be no problem," Says he. "Just a few pins and it should drop right off." Remarkably he wasn't far off. I managed to figure out how to take it off all by myself. There were four pins, two bolts (easy), the drive belt (remarkably easy, popped right off the pulley on the mower) and the linkage control cable. Remember this one. Took me a little thought, but I did get it off, no cursing involved. Loaded it into the Prius (yes, I drive a car that gets 48 miles to a gallon and a lawn mower that burns enough oil each time I mow to light Kentucky for a year) and head off to JDK Small Engine Repair. Like the place immediately. Just the kind of mom and pop shop that's going to give me great advice, or they'd never have stayed in business. "Sure enough," says he. "I drive the exact same mower. Gonna have to order the blades, but pop these little plastic pieces out, pop in the new blades and she'll pick up great." Said little plastic pieces were easy to remove. Basically designed to drive air downward from the deck as the blades spin. Describing the smoking problem, he also recommends replacing the needle valve in the carburetor. Guess what comes next.
Cody comes over. He said he'd thought about doing just that but had for some reason decided against it, I'm assuming because he didn't have the part. At $8- I figured it was worth a shot. He shows me how to disassemble the carburetor and pop in the needle. YASNIL. "Oh yeah," says he. "Check it every once in a while to make sure the bowl is clean."
While he's over, I also enlist his help with one other thing. The old blades have been on for 15 years and funny, the bolts don't want to come off. "Gotta pipe or something to lengthen the handle of this wrench?" says he.
"Course I do," says I. Thinking quickly, I remembered that he and Tracy (his housemate) had brought over some extra shovels that a friend no longer needed and one of them had it's handle "repaired" with a length of pipe that would work perfect. Managed to get the bolts un-done, which I'm sure would have caused a bunch of cursing had he not been there. Cleaned out the plastic netting that had melted itself to one of the shafts while I was at it.
Blades arrive in the shop and I go and pick them up, as well as a little refurbished chain saw. (He had a really cool sculpture of retired saws in the shop that made me want to ask if he sold them. Sure enough, he had a little one that should be perfect for me come in on a trade in the day I'd first visited and said he'd sell it to me cheap and have it ready when the blades came in. Runs great now that I know how to work it and made short work of the dead limb on the apple tree. Fun!) Get 'em home and get 'em installed in the deck no problem. Even managed to get the deck reinstalled remembering where everything went without a hitch. Or so I thought. Hook up the bagger again and pull her out of the garage, excited about he possibility of all this finally coming together. Drive over to the lawn and pull up on the lever that engages the blade. Snap. No joy. Lever loose, blades not spinning. Uh oh. Pull back in the garage and shut her down.
Finally gaining confidence, I decide to try one on my own. Must be the linkage cable that I'd taken off and re-attached. I'd moved the nuts that set its' tension, and figured this wouldn't be a problem because it's spring mounted as well. Apparently it did matter. Okay, lesson learned. Put it back EXACTLY the way you took it apart. Quick check at the deck shows me the cable is intact down there. Nuts. Means the break is in the console surrounding the steering column. There's a small gap between the gas tank and the engine block though which I can just grab the end of the cable and see the lever it's supposed to be attached to. End of the cable looks snapped off, leaving no real way to re-attach it easily. Crud. Also, I'm going to need to be able to get in there to actually do the work. After several minutes of examination, I realize removing the plastic housing (broken at one attachment point, BTW) is not going to be practical. Figure out that by undoing two other screws, it looks like I can take the gas tank out. Sure enough, popped right out, and thanks to Cody installing the shut off valve, I don't even have to drain the tank or clamp the hose! Now I can easily reach down in and fix the problem. Sure enough, whatever was on the end of the cable to attach it to the lever is busted good. Fortunately there is still a little of it left, so if I can clamp something around the cable, and bolt that to the lever, it should work. A trip to Lowe's later and I've got some small corner brackets and bolts that do just the job. After a little tinkering to set the tension, I think I've got it fixed. Re-assemble everything and take her out for a spin. Yay blades engaged! Yay, grass accumulating in bag! Pull over onto the driveway, grass filling the chute. Crud. Looks like the chute isn't really lining up well with the hole in the deck. I'd originally zip tied it in place to help that. Tried that again and re-tried the experiment. Grass in bag and..... NONE IN CHUTE! HE SHOOTS, HE SCORES!!!! FSILTDOMO!!!! (finally something I've learned to do on my own. Okay, I'll give up trying to coin new text speak.) Hence L posted my little happy dance. After this saga, I think I deserve it. Mowed all three lawns, had to empty the bags about four times to do so (but since I can just drive up to the yard waste bins, this isn't a big deal) and checked the chute each time I did. Totally clean. I think she's finally working. Except for the smoke. Oh yeah, there's that little piece of rebuilding the engine still sitting on the table...
