1 day, 3 lawnmower breakdowns, and a bonus breakdown

Buckle in folks, this is a long one...

 It wasn't so long ago I made a post on Reddit about my old Snapper lawnmower

I bragged a little bit about the buy it for life (bifl) mentality of the machine and how it's been faithfully mowing my grass since 2010. Interestingly I posted about it waaay back when I first got the machine but apparently never updated for when I got it running. I wonder if I used it in 2009? I don't remember.

Anyway, yesterday I went to mow the lawn after being away for 2 weeks. Mower fired right up, I made one half loop of the tiny front yard and the blade got loose on the spindle.

This picture is actually not from yesterday but from a month ago, I've been fighting this problem for awhile now. The blade is held on by a nut that is stepped which centers the blade and holds it on.

What has happened is that the blade got loose in the past and the step has gotten enlarged so it doesn't hold the blade. The fix is to carefully grind the step back so the nut can grab the blade again. Actually a better fix would be to make a spacer with a step out of some hardened metal that the nut can push against the blade. Yesterday I used the quick fix and ground a little more off the nut, back to work.

Made another half loop around the yard, heard a "thunk" and lost propulsion. This is another long term problem, the drive system on this machine is super simple, theres a flat plate on the end of the driveshaft, under the engine. The "transmission" such as it is, has a rubber drive wheel that runs perpendicular to the plate. Push the drive wheel into the plate and you go. Adjust where the drive wheel is on the plate and you go faster, slower or backwards. Simple system, easy to use, easy to work on.

The drive wheel is a wear item and regularly needs replacing as the rubber wears, apparently one time I didn't get the bolts tight enough and I managed to strip the holes. I'd put them back with locktite but apparently that wasn't good enough.

I decided I would make this a forever fix, tap the holes to the next size up (3/8 up from 5/16) and put nuts on the end of the bolts. I scrounged around and found appropriate nuts, bolts, washers and lock washers and got it all bolted up and locktited as you see above.

Problem: the nut on the end of the bolt needs to occupy the same space as the brake shoe...

Rats.

I experimented with custom thin nuts but it's no soap, there just isn't space, so in this shot you see the final, the nuts cut off flush. I was just thinking I ought to go back and peen the bolts so they can't back out but then I remembered that drive wheel is still a wear component and will need replacing, in fact it ought to be replaced next year. When I order a new drive wheel I'll also order a new nut for the blade spindle.

So back to mowing, this time I managed to get the whole front yard mowed when one of the front tires went flat. Fortunately I noticed it pretty much right away. In the past I've failed to notice problems like this and run the tire off the rim, these little tires can be a lot of work to put back on the rim...

Of course the tire had come off the bead so here I'm using a strap and screwdriver to force it back onto the bead. Once back on the bead I could get air into it but I could also hear it coming back out.

That's the upholstery tack I found in the tire. Well what to do now? It was after 2pm so our local hardware store was closed and I don't have a tire patch kit, or if I do I don't know where it is. I poked around a minute and managed to find a can of fix-a-flat. Does that stuff work? Well this time it sure did, I put way too much into the tire, rotated it so the hole was pointed down and put some air to it. Sure enough the leak stopped and I FINALLY mowed the lawn.

Interestingly the rest of the lawn was mowed without event, no issues at all.

Bonus: While messing with the tire my air hose developed a leak. The leak is right at the end, the part that gets handled/bent around the most. This is a Harbor Freight air hose that came on a retracting reel, it was cheap and I've had it 4 or 5 years. Recently I had noticed some weather checking on the line so I knew something like this was coming.

For now I've wrapped it in electrical tape. Does that stop the leak? Nope but it slows it down a little and makes me feel a little better about it. Short term I'll probably cut a couple feet off the line but that's just a temporary fix while I get a new hose...