Mower conundrum

Have you noticed how just when you need your car for a special reason, that’s when it always lets you down? This year it was the same with my ride-on mower. Just as the grass began growing furiously and needed to be cut before it got too long, my ride-on stopped cutting. Luckily only a smallish area was left at the back and I was able to finish it off with my ‘débroussailleuse’ (brush cutter) but that was only a short-term solution as the grass was only just getting into its stride and was going to continue growing at a fast rate, especially with all the showers we’ve been getting.

I had the possibility of another temporary solution while my ride-on is out of commission in the form of a self-propelled rotary motor mower which I put into storage nearly three years ago when I moved out of my old house. This, however, was always going to be a desperate lifeline as it was never reliable when I was using, or trying to use, it regularly. Once it was running it was a good worker but getting it started was always a frustrating business.

Anyway, I removed it from storage and it spent last night in my living room before I took it outside to see whether I could start it and keep it running for long enough to cut my grass front and back. This is it before I tried to see if I could remove, strip and clean its carburettor, which I suspected to be the source of the starting problem.

After checking, cleaning and re-gapping the spark plug the ruddy thing would not start. I couldn’t remove its carburettor because it’s held on by what appear to be 9.5mm bolts (I guess they are an AF size but the spanner(s) I need are in another tool box that’s still in storage) and one of them is impossible to get to anyway, so all I could do was remove the carburettor bowl (which was perfectly clean) and blow up into it the best I could.

After reassembling everything I kept pulling on the starter cord until I got a blister on my right index finger (even with gloves on) and just as I was about to give up and consign the machine to the ‘déchetterie’ it started out of the blue. I kept it going long enough even with a restart to refuel until I’d done the grass in the front by which time I thought it time to have something to eat and a cold beer before starting on the grass at the back. But it was not to be because I could not get the damn thing to run again no matter how many times I pulled on the starter cord.

When I’d dismantled my ride-on to investigate why it had stopped cutting I’d found that the problem was more serious than I’d thought. The spindle of one of the cutting belt pulleys on the cutting bed is mounted in a bracket which evidently is subject to considerable load because over time not only had the hole in the bracket been extremely ovalled by the bolt that forms the spindle but the bolt itself had actually sheared off. When I measured the thickness of the metal bracket I found it to be 5mm which gives some indication of the extent of the load it is designed to take.

My searches on the internet turned up that I could buy a complete new cutting bed, bare so I’d have to transfer over all of the parts from my old bed, for just over 250€ and I’d seriously considered doing that as my mower has been really good and trouble-free the whole time that I’ve had it and a new bed would, I’m sure, keep it going for many more years.

However, I thought that if I cut out the damaged section of the bracket, I could weld in a new piece that would, after drilling, make the bracket virtually as good as new. I’d ordered a small piece of 5mm thick steel which arrived today so I thought that as it was fine and I’d taken my welder out of storage in anticipation, I’d get cracking straight away today so I’d know sooner rather than later if a new cutting bed was actually going to be needed.

The next couple of pictures show the damaged section of bracket that I cut out. It’s standing on a piece of white paper on the repaired bracket because I didn’t take a picture before starting work.

The next couple of shots show the repair that I did. I’m no welder by any stretch of the imagination and it took me a while to weld, grind off the excess and repeat the process before I eventually got to what I thought was an acceptable result.

Once I’d cleaned up and cleared away I turned up a can of matt black spray paint in my ‘abris’ (tool shed) so although I didn’t have enough time to do a proper job, I rubbed off several areas of surface rust and gave them a coat, including the drilled and finished repaired bracket.

And finally, a couple of shots of the repaired cutting bed ready for the belt pulley system to be reassembled and the bed remounted on my ride-on.

It looks as though we’ve got a couple of dry days coming up with afternoon temperatures of 22 and 23 degrees C respectively, so with a bit of luck I’ll be able to put everything back together and try the repair out on my grass. I just hope that it works OK because I don’t fancy stripping and rebuilding the machine again. I’ve ordered a new spark plug for the old machine and if that doesn’t solve its starting issue I think that it’ll be time to send it off to the rest home in the sky for elderly mowers, especially as I don’t really have enough space for it anyway 🙁