This summer I was given a big box store Toro. Tecumseh engine. Took a carburetor and both the start/stop and the drive cables. Found a blade from my old Toro that I dumped when the drive went out. The mower was in the scrap pile, had not run in a year. Forty dollars later it runs.

my son just ran mine out of oil.. so it wont start either. or crank

quote:

Originally posted by Ronin101:
my son just ran mine out of oil.. so it wont start either. or crank

Future MIL has toasted 2 lawn mowers by doing this in the last few years. Both seized solid. The first one was a POS anyway, but the last one was a fairly new Torro. She said she was checking, but it was really hard to see the level on the oil dipper.

Its my fault for not checking it and teaching him to check it. It was 10-12 years old. I kinda wanted an upgrade anyway!!!

If you haven’t looked at electric mowers in a while, they might be worth considering. They’re more powerful and reliable than ever. And it’s instant on...hold power button, lower deadman bar, bam, you’re going. Quiet, low maintenance, plug and play.

I’d say my wife loves it but I’m the only one who mows with it. Still, it’s not bad at all.

At present, my solution is to pay a lawn service saving me a lot of aggravation and freeing up time. My physical fitness program requires 100 minutes a day, including travel, and I would much rather spend time doing that and paying someone a small fee to service the lawn. I'm tempted to offer him the commercial lawnmower for X number of visits. I might get eight visits out of it.

So far my 2015 Home Depot Toro starts on the first or second pull every time. Have only changed the plug once, oil twice, and "blade driver" once (pulley thing blade attaches to worn out due to the super sandy "soil" here). I do always get ethanol free gas for it. I'm going to go knock on all kinds of wood now...

The Lawnboy 4-cycle that I bought back around 2011 to replace a 25-year old Lawnboy 2-stroke that finally died only gets run on a rare occasion. It will often sit 6, 8, or even 12 months between starts, and it still fires right up! It has only had one spark plug change since new, and never had the carb cleaned or replaced. I used it to mow my yard weekly until the summer of 2014 when I got my first riding mower, then it became my backup, and only brought out for the occasional trim work as required.

After I moved to a different house, it literally sat for 18 months without being started, and even then only required about 6 pulls of the starter rope to fire up!

How is this possible??? I ONLY use 100% ethanol-free gas in all of my lawn equipment, and for the smaller engines (push mower, weed eater, and chain saw) I also use a quality fuel stabilizer like Sea Foam (the Husqvarna oil I buy for my saw already has the best stabilizer possible, so nothing extra is needed) in the gas can/jug. Since switching to this way of feeding my equipment, ALL of my fuel-related problems have disappeared for good!

My late brother was probably THE best small engine mechanic in his county in TN, and possibly several surrounding counties also. When he left the local Co-op due to his declining health, all of the small engine customers started showing up at his house begging him to work on their stuff. Eventually, as his health would allow, he took on more and more of it until cancer got a good hold on him and put him out of business. He was factory certified by Briggs & Stratton, Husqvarna, Toro, and a number of other major players. He knew his stuff! If I learned nothing else from him regarding small engines (and I learned tons more), it is USE QUALITY ALCOHOL-FREE FUEL, KEEP IT CLEAN AND FRESH, AND USE A QUALITY FUEL STABILIZER IF IT'S NOT GOING TO BE BURNED WITHIN 90 DAYS!!! Regarding 2-stroke engines, quit using el-cheapo oils from Wal-Mart for the fuel mix and buy QUALITY oil like the one Husqvarna makes (yes, it'll work fine in ANY 2-stroke engine); the stuff is worth the price difference IF you would like to avoid the hassles of an engine that will not start and run properly down the road!

Oh, and keep your damned air filters clean!!! People always forget about the air filters, but they clog quickly... much faster that most people realize, and often much faster than the owner's manual recommends for a change! If it's paper, at least pull it out and blow it out with compressed air from the backside to remove the heavy stuff between changes!

Gonna get off of my soapbox now...