Well, this is Topaz Mercury’s user name. This is his lawnmower. His real name is Garret. I am supposed to get it running this year. I heard he run over a bunch of sticks or pieces of wood or something and did not start and it run crappy before that.
So, I have not even looked at it yet, so I will show you what I do to fix lawnmowers I know nothing about. First thing I do, I will put a vice-grip on the break handle so that I can turn the motor freely. Give it a tip and rotate the blade and I watch the bolt on the crankshaft to see if it wobbles. That will tell me if the crank is bent or not. This one wobbles a little bit. So, that is telling me he may have sheared the flywheel key and that could be why it is not starting because that throws the timing off, so next step is to first see if this wreck the engine. Pull the string. Compression feels normal so the engine is not wrecked. So, I will check the flywheel key now.
Now that I have got all the peripherals removed, I have to remove the ratchet that releases when you start it. It turns one way, and the ratchets the other way. I made a handy dandy tool to do this when I was 14 years old. The bottom is four wheel knots welded on. The round plate is the round off the back of a big magnet speaker. Piece of ordinary pipe and this three quarter inch socket welded to it with a half inch drive hole.
So, the way it works. This wheel knots slip overtop of the bumps and hold the mesh on like that, grips it and with an air impact tool comes off in the wink of an eye just like so. They wake my eye and it is off. This part has ball bearings in it. Never oil or grease them, just make sure the pockets are clean. If you put oil or grease in there the bearings stick on the end and then a thing does not catch when you are pulling.
Well, now that I have got everything off, I can see that flywheel key is in perfect condition so now I can put it back together and continue to see what is wrong with it. It is a great idea to put a few drops of light oil in the hole of this thing every few years, there is even a little socket in there to absorb oil. That is what the hole is there for, you can add the oil from the top.
If you ever start your lawnmower up and a few seconds later it starts making huge screeching sounds. Well, that shaft is seizing up on here because there is no oil, so all you do is send a shaft and add some oil.
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