Well its that time of year again. That first grass cutting attempt of the year.
I use the term attempt since its what usually happens to most people since the mower usually isn’t very happy about being woke up after being put aside for the winter.
Some of the time I get lucky and can just start back cutting. I charge my mowers with the solar charging system so I never have dead batteries to deal with and that is probably the biggest problem most people run into. Well that and bad gas. But I use non ethanol gas in my mowers so I don’t usually have that problem either.
What turned this seasons first crank into a nightmare was all of the things I had been putting off.
I have a cub cadet LT 1024 mower.
Love the thing. Powerful, reliable, has drink holders and even cruise control 🙂
But it had started to have issues and I had ignored them. So now as this seasons first cut was about to commence I was about to pay the price for that neglect.
I don’t neglect the really serious things like checking the oil and such and I wash it after each grass cutting.
But I had neglected a problem that had been creeping up with the carburetor. I had to keep the choke pulled a bit to get it to run right. This of course meant it was starving for gas. This could be a clogged jet, filter or even float issues. So a carb was ordered.
Also the blades were leaving gaps that I had to go back over. So they were dull and were even the wrong blades from the previous owners. My step dad uses gator blades which he likes allot so I decided I would try those and ordered some.
Well the blades came in first. So I go to crank the mower to back it out to change the blades. It runs for about 10 seconds then quits and wont start back. I checked the plugs and one looked a bit wet while the other was fine. So I ordered plugs. While I was waiting on the plugs I went ahead and poured a bit of gas into the carb and it started up and ran fine but again it was 10 seconds or so and it quit. Well the carb was on its way so no biggy.
When the carb arrived I installed it. That was not fun since I had to take a ton of stuff off to get to it and the linkages are always a pain on small engines but once installed I went to crank it and it wouldn’t ever start. I poured gas in again and it ran till that ran out then nothing. At this point I figured something was wrong with the fuel shutoff solenoid system. Seeing as I need to cut the grass already I bypassed it for now. Still would only run with gas poured into the carb.
But I kept doing this over and over pouring in about a caps worth (used the gas cans cap) each time and let it run till it quit on its own. After about 5 times it stayed running and ran fine. I guess it needed to get the fuel thru the system.
So now I have it running but the tires are so bad now I can’t even move it around to put the blades on it.
They had been leaking down after each grass cutting and I would simple air them up and head out to cut the yard without thinking much about it. Well they were cracking it seems all around the sidewalls of the tires. So now they wont hold air but about 3 minutes tops. So I am waiting on new tires to get here before I can cut the grass.
I may go ahead and do the blades via raising the mower up on jack stands with a jack vs waiting on the tires and using the ramps.
This is why I referred to this as “attempting” to cut the grass 🙂
More on this whenever the tires get here.