vituperation

I have a Troy-Bilt riding mower that has given me fits for the last year and a half. This year especially. I’m not exaggerating when I say it’s needed some sort of repair almost every single time I’ve used it: deck belt, drive belt, spindle, and transmission, to name a few from this season. I did some of the fixes myself, but I’m not the most mechanical guy ever put on the earth.

There’s a local guy who fixes mowers, and his prices are reasonable, but I’ve called him so many times now I know his number by heart. A couple of weeks ago, less than one week after I’d replaced a broken spindle on the deck, the steering went out on the mower while I was cutting the front yard.

That was the last straw.

I went to Lowe’s and bought a new Husqvarna mower, a nice 48-inch model with all the fancy options, like a cup holder. This time, I bought the extended protection option, even though I am normally loathe to do such a thing. If this one is going to break, it’s going to by-God be fixed for (almost) free.

The original plan was to just push the offending mower to the end of the driveway and leave it for whoever wanted to take it, but on the way home from Lowe’s I started thinking maybe I could list it on Craigslist for a hundred bucks for parts, if nothing else. By the time I got back to the house I wanted to take the mower apart and figure out what happened. Now that I’d bought a new one, it didn’t matter if I screwed the old one up, and I hate leaving a problem unsolved. Robyn can attest to that. I lose sleep if I try to go to bed and there’s an unresolved problem in my head.

I dug down into the mower and pretty quickly found the problem: a broken doohickey. It looked like it was half hex nut and half washer, only a good chunk of the hex part had sheared off and letting the sprocket thingy on the steering shaft (rod? stick?) come free from the gear whatchacallit that turned the wheels.

Like I said, not the most mechanical fella.

Google told me the broken part was called a hex flange bearing, and I found a replacement one online for $1.75. A guy I work with — who knew about the problems I had — agreed to buy the newly fixed mower for $400.

Spurred on by my amazing success, I thought it might not be a bad idea to maybe learn some basics about small engines. With as many as I have — mowers, blower, trimmer, chainsaw, cultivator — it could probably save me some money in the long run if I knew how to fix things myself. I did some reading on howthingswork.com to learn how engines work (seriously, I didn’t have a clue beyond “controlled explosion” and “piston going up and down”) and ordered a book from Amazon on small engine repair.

Then I went on Craigslist and posted in the farm and garden section asking for a cheap broken lawnmower to learn on. Within a couple of hours I had an email from a guy who had an old Craftsman mower that would only run for a couple of minutes, then stop and not start again. He wanted $12 for it.

The guy lived in a mansion with a perfectly manicured yard. We showed up in our big bubba farm truck, me in dirt- and paint-stained clothes. I paid for the mower with $1 bills from the egg money envelope (I’m not much of a cash carrier), and felt like quite the Jed Clampett.

The first thing I did when I got home was remove the carburetor from the mower. With the extensive knowledge gleaned from a half-hour of reading a web site, I figured that’s where the problem was, since it sounded like gas wasn’t getting to the engine. When I opened the carburetor a bunch of gasoline and little pieces fell out.

I didn’t expect that.

Studying the contents, I found what looked like a piece of grass stuck in the wire clip that was attached to the needle (thanks, Google, for teaching me the names of all those pieces!). I made sure it was clean, and I cleaned all the pieces of the carburetor. The next day I went to the local small engine shop and bought all new gaskets (the old ones crumbled when I took the carburetor apart) for $5.

With a little bit of staring at the pieces, I figured out how everything went back in the carburetor and got it put back together. I reattached it to the mower,hooked the throttle assembly back up, and put the gas tank back on. Then I dithered for about 10 minutes because I worried the whole thing might explode and douse me with burning gasoline when I tried to start it. I figured Robyn wouldn’t want to have to come outside and roll me around on the ground like Charlie(go to 1:14) to put me out. Finally, I primed the engine and pulled on the starter rope.

It fired up on the first pull, and I was so excited at what a studly man I was that I sang a show tune.

The mower was still running 30 minutes later when I finally shut it off. I felt like I’d graduated to a new level of manhood then, and now I’m ready to try something tougher.

The coolest part? I fixed the mower before the book on small engine repair got to me.

You know what I wonder? I wonder if a baby chick has 70 calories in it, like an egg does.

This man’s music sure makes me happy.