Originally Posted By: eljefino
You guys should have seen my old mower.
The deck was rusting out where the wheel axles went through and the wheel "rubber" was rubbing on the deck. I welded some huge washers in to shore it up and caught the grass inside the deck on fire in the process. The handles got floppy where their bolts went through the deck (I do "wheelies" all the time) so I just welded the handles as well.
The deadman died so I took out the brake shoe and wired the kill wire to a 49 cent leviton light switch. Since "on" kills it I mounted the switch upside down so it makes sense if you don't read it. Interlopers who borrow the machine get stymied by my security system.
I like a good clean cut like the next guy so the governor is tweaked for more RPM. The ungrounded spark plug connector shorted out when I mowed under wet shrubs so I wiggled an old elbow boot off a car's ignition wire and stuck that on there.
One time squirrels got in there and built a nest inside the blower cowl area. This pegged the throttle wide open. I didn't really notice it until I turned it off and it kept going from its overheating, it was dieseling. I yanked the spark plug wire off with a stick to be sure, it really was compression igniting. It eventually ran out of gas and ran fine after it cooled down and was cleaned out. Briggs 3.5 flathead of course.
Then I found a mower at the dump that was in better shape. I was going to only use it on hills due to oil starvation and running over "starchy stuff" (eg sticks) but it ran so good it was promoted into my primary machine.
Had several mowers like that before this one. In fact they were running great and better shape than this one right now. I gave a 20" to my neighbors that they left out in the rain now runs terrible. I could get it running good easily.
