Lawn Loitering

Starting last summer my lawnmower began to have a very annoying habit of taking forever to get going. Even when it was primed and ready, I would have to pull on the starter rope 10-15 times before the mower would roar to life... for about 30 seconds. Five pulls later and it would start again... for about a minute. It was only after another 10 pulls that it would start a third time and 20 more would finally get it to run long enough for me to get the lawn mowed. You may be wondering why I never bothered to have an expert look at it and the answer is quite simple - it was still starting. You see, I have the very annoying character trait of being quite willing to deal with things not performing well as long as they eventually complete their task. So, provided I could eventually get the lawn mowed that was all I cared about. Honestly, the only way I would have ever caved and taken it to get a check-up at a professional was if it just refused to start at all. I figured part of it was my fault because I don't mow the lawn nearly enough, allowing the mower to sit for a couple weeks at a time, which probably doesn't aid performance. On top of that, I figured mowing the lawn is supposed to suck a little so taking forever to get the mower started was just part of deal. Still, looking back on all that extra tugging and pulling I guess what happened this weekend was inevitable.

I gave the starter rope a strong pull and to my surprise the mower roared to life. It was the usual routine of only working for a minute before cutting out, but the fact that I had only had to pull once to get to that point made it feel like I was almost skipping a step. I was sure fate was on my side as I pulled the rope a second time... and it snapped off in my hand. It had frayed on the inside and broken at the point of contact. The good news is that in addition to my lawnmower, the tool box is also in the shed so I didn't have to spend time going back and forth looking for the right bolt sizes. Even better, the entire casing was held on by just two small bolts and those came off with relative ease. After that it was just a matter of threading the broken rope through the two guide holes and tying a new knot. [Sidebar: this was not easy and for the first time in ages, the DIY section of YouTube failed me. On the video I watched the expert skipped right passed this part, making it appear to be an extremely simple process, while the reality is that it is only simple if you have long, thin fingers. Add lawnmower repairman to the list of careers I will never undertake.] Fortunately after a couple of attempts I was able to force the rope through and tie a new knot. I figured it was an annoying task, but at least I had repaired the lawnmower and could go about my task. This is where it should be pointed out that I don't actually know anything about lawnmowers.

For you see, on the next pull the lawnmower again roared to life, ran for a second and died. The good news is that is typical. It was also good news that my new knot held firm. The bad news is that I still had all the excess rope in my hands because while I had fixed the rope, I had not fixed the spring which would recoil the rope back in. That meant I would only get one pull before having to take the top of the motor apart and winding the rope back up manually. That didn't sounds like a particularly efficient idea, so I quickly went back to YouTube to see about fixing the spring. Unfortunately there were plenty of videos on the topic, but none which related to my brand of mower. (I'm not sure if this means I have a good mower which never needs repair or a bad one which isn't worth fixing.) Trying not to take too many things apart because it would mean having to put them back together in the correct order, I just tried winding the spring on my own. On the next pull I got a small bit of recoil, enough to get a second pull on the starter rope, but still not enough to convince the mower to start for good. (Even worse I had to untie the knot to do this and then re-tie it when I was finished. I can't not stress that you should not do this strongly enough. Seriously, don't press your luck trying to thread the rope through the guide hole twice.) Now I was just trying to get the mower to stay running and deal with the problem later.

I think the most annoying part of this whole thing is that I was going through all this and I didn't even want to mow the stupid lawn anyway. Normally I like throwing on my headphones and tuning out the world for an hour, but in this particular instance there were plenty of things I could have been doing with my Saturday afternoon which would have been much more enjoyable. There really is nothing worse than when a chore you really don't want to do also becomes a difficult one. The issue is that I had let the lawn go for far too long and it was not like ignoring it would suddenly make it shorter. Besides, as I mentioned the mower likes to go through a series of false starts before finally kicking on for good and I couldn't shake the feeling the next pull would be the one which allow me to get the job done. (I assume this irrational confidence that circumstances will change is what keeps people excessively buying lottery tickets.) Unfortunately that pull wasn't the magic one and neither was the attempt after that. Dozens of pulls are normally just part of the procedure, but when you have to take apart part of the engine casing after every pull it really becomes time consuming. The good part is that every time I took the casing apart I came up with a new idea of what I should try next to fix the spring and while none of them worked, at least I know not to waste my time on them later. Eventually the fifth time was the charm, the mower stayed on and I could finally clean up the lawn.

Sadly, this doesn't really solve my problem, just postpones it and allowing problems with my lawnmower to linger is what got me into this spot in the first place. (Allow me to share something weird - for some reason after the lawn was finished I felt the need to go in and wind the pull rope up one more time. While mowing I had just tied the extra rope around the handlebar to keep it out of my way. But, my particular mower will keep running as long as the handlebar is being squeezed, so I had to undo it when I finished and leave the rope dangling. That seemed very messy to me, so after giving the lawnmower an hour to cool down I took the outer shell off one last time to wind the string up and then didn't touch it. So, from all outside appearances it looks the same as it did before. OCD can be a hell of a thing sometimes.) I just need to make sure I get around to working on this before I let the lawn get out of hand again or else I will find myself up against the clock, tugging and disassembling all over again. The goods news is that I now have another couple of weeks before the lawn should get too long and hopefully I can find a solution to my problem before that. But if I can't it may finally be time to take it in and let a professional take a look at it. If that does happen I may also have him take a look at the starter since he'll be in the area.