My husband swore a few years ago that if I bought him a lawnmower he’d mow the yard and we could stop paying somebody to do it. Every year something happens when it’s time to start it up and we get a letter from the city. Last year we ended up taking it in to get it looked at, which was so not cheap. So I was hoping you guys might have advice for only moderately handy people to get this thing fixed.
No, we didn’t drain it last winter. We had a baby. Plus we’re not quite sure how to do that and what you do with the gas? I mean, you can’t just throw it down a storm drain.
Complicating factor: I have a bad feeling that the mister may have used the wrong gas can when he filled it up before trying it, which would be the edger gas (which has oil mixed in.).
We tried the quick start spray stuff. It almost turned once.
I’m thinking before we haul it in again that we should try draining the gas and putting new gas in it, but again, what are you supposed to do with it? Do you have to siphon it? Flip it over? Over what?
Seriously, I’m great at a lot of household stuff but this lawn care and small engine business is so far out of my wheelhouse that I feel like a total moron trying to deal with it. And I’m supposed to be the handy one. My husband is the one who probably put THE WRONG GAS in, so, you know.
Oil in the gas won’t matter at all. You’ll just have a smokier exhaust.
The easiest thing to try right now is a new spark plug. For a few bucks you’ll have eliminated 50% of the possible problems.
at the end of a season you could drain the gas and put it in your car gas tank.
if there might now be mixed gas in the mower then drain that and put it in your car gas tank.
mark your gas cans durably and clearly as to their contents.
put fresh oil in the mower or at least have the oil level correct.
use fresh gas for the mower. after 1 to 2 months put unused gas it in your car gas tank and buy fresh gas for the mower.
change or at least clean the mower spark plug.
The typical thing to do is to drain the gas (use a bulb syphon), take the spark plug out and clean it, take the air filter off and clean or replace it, and then clean everything with carb cleaner, and let it air-dry.
Then, put the spark plug back in, fill with a [del]really hot cup of tea[/del] fresh gas, pump the bulb a few times and pull the cord (while crossing your fingers).
In my entire lifetime “stale gas” has never, ever been a problem. Ever.
I’ll second this. I once had an old mower that sat for 3 years with old gas - I changed the spark plug and it started fine. So like others have said - change out your spark plug. That may be all that’s needed. Good luck!
Spark plugs aren’t something you just plug and play, though, are they? Don’t you have to gap them or something?
Yes you should gap your plug. Of course, I didn’t bother with my last one and the mower runs fine.
Sounds like it’s time to leave the baby with Dad and dig out the manual. I assume spark plugs are not one size fits all? And I bet you sex to donuts there’s a spark plug socket in the giant tool chest my dad dumped on me. I can’t imagine there isn’t; there’s an everything else in there.
You’ll need to replace the spark plug with the EXACT same one, or at least a verifiable replacement model. Otherwise you’ll be even more screwed. The gap also is important. It’s possible that the replacement will come pre-gapped correctly, but you can’t always count on that. A set of spark plug gap thingies is cheap. The store selling the plug might be able to check the gap for you.
ETA: Sorry. I see I’m not the first to respond to this. Ooops.
If the starting fluid didn’t cause it to roar to life momentarily, that tells you your problem probably isn’t fuel. Another vote for the plug. Although the plug spontaneously going bad over the winter could be because of gas varnish building up on the electrodes. If you don’t want to splurge on a new plug you might be able to get away with just cleaning and regapping the current one.
It’s not getting fire if the starting fluid didn’t ignite. The plug itself may be the culprit or there may not be electricty reaching the plug. One traditionally checked that, when I was a kid, by convincing someone else to stick his finger in the spark plug wire while you yanked the starter. If he got shocked, electrically all was well and the problem was with the plug. If he didn’t get shocked, step one was to see if mice had chewed any wires.
I’m 58 yrs. old, do my own mowing, and have NEVER had to gap a spark plug for a lawnmower.
You can take the old spark plug to any auto parts store and tell them you want one just like it. I am sure they’ll gap it for you too, if you know what the recommended gap is. You can drain the tank by releasing the fuel line right where it goes into the carburetor. Gas sitting in the carb for a long time can clog the jets in the carb. They’re easy to pull out and clean, but if you’ve never done it before it can seem intimidating. My hunch, having worked on my own mowers before I moved to a place with no lawn, is that it’s a fuel flow problem.
The oil in the gas shouldn’t stop it from running, but I would get it out rather than run it through. A neighbor of mine once somehow put oil in her gas tank. We got out what we could, then just added gas and fired it up. It laid down quite a smoke screen but ran OK.
See if this helps.
Agreed. The last time I needed a mower spark plug I bought it at True Value hardware store (any store that has mowers will sell plugs too). I just took it out of the package and stuck it in the mower and it worked fine. I don’t think setting the gap ever crossed my mind.
It is entirely possible that your mower (not just the edger) needs oil mixed in with the gas, too. Does it have a separate place to add oil? If it does use a mixture, it may require the oil in a different ratio than what your edger does, so you may still need to keep the gas/oil mixtures for each in separate cans.
Also, you mentioned digging out the manual…it is likely available online as a pdf if you have any problem finding the physical manual.
I have a 25-y.o mower that sits unused from November to April every year, and I have never had a problem with the gas that overwintered in the tank or in the gas can.
Ours is frequently harder to start when it is cold outside (like, under 50 degrees or so), but once it has started up it is easy to start for the rest of that lawnmowing session.
just checking for voltage on the spark plug wire, by shocking or other indicator, isn’t always enough.
the electrode on the top of the spark plug and the plug threads have to have shiny metal (for most of it). the electrodes at the gap have to be shiny metal as well.
It has not been much of a problem for me, but it does rear it’s unpleasent looking head from time to time and cause minor issues now and again. Some rough running, with a generator I had to plug in a space heater to stabilize it so it could adjust to the loading demands. Once and only once I had to take off the carb bowl and spray it with carb cleaner, which was very easy to do.
On the stale gas front-- usually the problem it causes is that the tiny little passages in the carburetor’s idle circuit get clogged up. That’s usually not a big problem for push lawnmowers because they’re designed to only run in a narrow range of speeds and so often don’t even have an idle circuit or will work okay without it. Stale gas (especially ethanol-enriched stale gas) can be a major problem for more complicated small gas engines like riding mowers, motorcycles, generators, etc though.
I have two weed whackers that won’t start, and I’m suspecting gummed up carburetors. What’s the solution? (Pun recognized.)