But I can no longer get replacement parts. The deck is out of manufacture, I need an air filter cover, but they haven’t made this particular engine in several years.
I’ve tried welding the wheel mounts onto the deck, but it’s really a suboptimal solution. I’m afraid I’ll need a new mower, but the engine still purrs like a cat. It feels like a huge waste.
What do you do with old mowers, anyhow?
a. Buy new mower.
b. Build hovercraft.
Nailed it in one.
Kid’s go-cart, post-hole digger, motorized bar-stool, enormous margarita blender or find a good mower with a crappy engine. Marry the two.
Call around to mower repair shops. You may be able to acquire a good used deck that will work with your mower’s engine and blade.
Go-Kart!
Install the motor and blade in your garage as the ultimate guy’s ceiling fan.
The former owners of our property buried them in the yard.
I need t know more. The engine: is it a Briggs and Straton, a Honda, Tecumsah, or what? What does the deck of the lawn mower look like? Who made that originally? You have given us nothing to go on besides “My lawn mower!”.
If you are looking for to do with a small engine besides scrapping it, I’m thinking go-cart. How much horsepower does the thing have? A 5-hp go cart has some get up and go.
Still need to know more, though.
NM
Pig roast rotisserie.
Go-Karts are very hard to make using a vertical shaft engine. You need a horizontal shaft engine for that, and I doubt the OP’s mower is a gas-powered reel mower.
Just sayin’
It’s a Briggs and Stratton 6.5 HP engine. Just superb for its job. It powers through the thickest, wettest grass like it’s not even there. This engine has never given me any problems, and has always started on the first pull. I’m kinda in love with it, but I’m very close to just trying to sell it and buying a new one. I hate it, though, because I hate to waste something that’s obviously in good condition, and that’s reliable.
I bought this mower in 2004.
The simplest solution would be to buy a new mower, and ask the place you buy it if they’ll take the old one in on trade. They may be able to harvest some other parts off the mower body, or will at least send the metal to a scrap dealer. That’s better than burying it in the back yard! And they can almost certainly find something to do with the motor.
You may not get a lot for it, but you’ll know that the motor, at lease, will likely live on somewhere.
I’m in AR. Where you at? I would love to have it.
I’m in AL. Might be a mite far… 
Yes, or they may buy the engine or trade for it.
But I’d recommend the hovercraft.
Is it full of eels?
I must be missing something here.
This is a whoosh, right?