This past weekend, I brought the new mower out to a friend’s farm to help him mow some of his “acreage” since he hasn’t been able to buy a big mower of his own. On Sunday afternoon we were just finishing mowing when the mower ran out of gas again. We had been mowing off and on for around 8 hours all totaled and things had been working great. I topped off the tank, jumped on and fired up the mower. I managed to drive about 5 more feet before it stopped running. Puzzled, I went to start it and it wouldn’t turn over. Really puzzled, I climbed off and tried to pull start it. I couldn’t even pull it over. Now I was worried. I hadn’t checked the oil all day.

I quickly pulled the dipstick out and was relieved to see that there was oil on the dipstick. I wiped it off, reinserted it and the pulled it out again. It was clean. Totally clean. I had run the mower out of oil. The engine had seized. I was crushed!! First off, I was crushed that I was so stupid as to not have checked the oil at least once the whole day. Granted, you wouldn’t expect it to use that much oil, but I didn’t even check it. I was also crushed that I seemingly wrecked my mower’s engine, and that was going to be costly to fix.

I pushed it back to my friend’s garage and explained to him what had happened. He’s pretty mechanically inclined, so he suggested something we try a quick fix and see what happens. He refilled the crankcase with oil. It actually did have oil in it, but only about half as much as it should have had in it. Then we pulled the spark plug and squirted oil into the cylinder. Lastly, he removed the flywheel cover and attached a breaker bar to the flywheel nut. Very gently, he pushed on the breaker bar until the piston broke free and began to move freely again. He slowly push the flywheel around with the breaker bar until the motor had gone through the combustion cycle about six times. Then, he put the spark plug back in, and fired it up. Would you believe it? It actually ran!! I thought it was a goner for sure. Now we’ll see how long it lasts. It obviously uses a little oil, so I might have to consider rebuilding that motor.

–Pete