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DadTruck
Turbo EFI
Joined: 17 Sep 2008
Posts: 1103
Location: Indianapolis
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Post subject:
old mowers and spring
(Wed Mar 21, 2012 6:20 pm)
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one of my favorite rites of spring is bringing my old lawn mowers back to life...
my plan is to use the same two pieces of mowing equipment through my entire adult life,, yep,,I like keeping things in working order..
I cut the lawn with:
1971 Toro Guardian Model 21 19271,, Tecumsch Motor,,my mom and dad bought this for me in 1978 when I purchased my first house, they got it for 25.00 at a garage sale. Today I use it for general trimming...
and a
1972 Wheel Horse Raider 8 Model 1 0330 7,, Kohler Motor,
I purchased this from my dad in 1979,,main lawn cutter, built like an ox, cast iron front and rear axel, high and low drive, could plow with it...
I put a head gasket, points and rebuilt the carb on the Toro about 1995, Replaced the tires in 2005, those ain't ez to find,,The Wheel Horse Kohler motor is basically un touched since 1992. Probably due for points and a combustion chamber cleaning and head gasket...The Wheel Horse does goes through mower deck spindle bearing about every 4 years, but runs good!
Change the oil in the fall before putting them away, and during the summer around the weekend of the 4th of July. I keep the air filters and spark plugs serviced. Always run the gas out in the fall before putting them away.
Today, put gas in the Toro, tightened the spark plug, shot the carb with ether , gave it full choke, and it started on the first pull!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/13718356@N02/sets/72157629638312773/
here is to another 20 years of use 
any other old mowers out there?
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SlantSixDan
Board Sponsor & Contributor
Joined: 31 Oct 2002
Posts: 21883
Location: North America
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Post subject:
(Wed Mar 21, 2012 6:50 pm)
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Lookit there! Before I was into cars, I was heavy into small engines, and with the exception of a small mountain of Briggs & Stratton 6B-Ss, I strongly preferred Tecumseh engines. That Toro of yours is an oddball…it's got the Kleen-Aire ducted air cleaner, but I would not expect to see a rope sheave starter cup on such a late model -- those went out of style in the late '50s! On a '71 like that I'd expect to see, in order of likelihood, a vertical-pull (side mount) recoil, a horizontal-pull (top mount) recoil, or a windup starter. Replacement engine, perhaps, or maybe the original starter gave trouble and was retro(!)fitted with the rope sheave. I note the gas-gauge type fuel cap and Toro's (remind me again how this isn't a dumb idea?) down-discharge exhaust. What is it, an LAV-30? LAV-35?_________________ 一期一会
By birth & parentage: US citizen, 2nd class
By choice: Canadian citizen, 1st class
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Ceej
SSRN National Champion
Joined: 31 Mar 2003
Posts: 6338
Location: Oregon
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Post subject:
(Wed Mar 21, 2012 6:52 pm)
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Yep. As soon as it stops snowing, I'll take a picture of it! 
CJ_________________ 
Tyrde-Browne Racing
I'm off to find myself. If I should return before I get back, keep me here. |
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zorg
Turbo Slant 6
Joined: 21 Feb 2003
Posts: 847
Location: Bremerton, WA
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Post subject:
(Wed Mar 21, 2012 8:09 pm)
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Not as old as yours, but my folks still use a circa ~'86 Yard King. It was originally equipped with a Brigs, but I managed to bend the shaft on that, and swapped it out with a slightly newer Tecumseh off a $25 yard sale mower. It's a slightly wider deck than normal, and has the most even cut of any mower I've ever used. I've asked to have it included in my inheritance..._________________  |
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phogroian
EFI Slant 6
Joined: 14 Mar 2004
Posts: 312
Location: Falls Church, VA
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Post subject:
(Thu Mar 22, 2012 5:34 am)
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| When I bought my house in 1996, the seller (retiring to Florida) included with the sale an old Lawn Boy Commercial two-stroke. It requires almost zero maintenance, and still runs.
_________________
Never seen a Valiant I didn't like!
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wjajr
Supercharged
Joined: 16 Feb 2008
Posts: 3639
Location: Downeast Maine
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Post subject:
(Thu Mar 22, 2012 5:37 am)
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Anyone ever had a Craftsman crank & push start lawn mower c mid-sixties? It had a large folding crank handle mounted on top of engine in place of a rope pull. One would laboriously make five or six cranks, fold the crank back over its self & push down to release a spring that would turn over the engine. That machine was a pig of a hard cold starting engine.
As a young lad, one summer job was mowing a small cemetery in the mid-sixties. I had the pleasure of trying to start one of those cantankerous piles of junk supplied by the cemetery association weekly for two years. Often took five minutes of crank & push before it would go. It was one very frustrating activity while keeping clouds of black flies at bay.
All my cheap push mowers would go until there was nothing left to weld fender washers on, in order to remount the wheels…_________________ 67' Dart GT Convertible; the old Chrysler Corp.
82' LeBaron Convertible; the new Chrysler Corp
07' 300 C AWD; Now by Fiat, the old new Chrysler LLC
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DadTruck
Turbo EFI
Joined: 17 Sep 2008
Posts: 1103
Location: Indianapolis
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Post subject:
(Thu Mar 22, 2012 6:13 am)
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| Quote: | | a vertical-pull (side mount) recoil |
The vertical-pull (side mount) recoil is what I believe it had originally,,the flywheel is cogged for a gear drive where it would mesh in,, and I had picked up from the internet a copy of the original sales brochure,, and it shows one of those. It had the rope cog on it when I got it,,
I should have got a shot of the other side of the motor,, one of the best features is that instead of the block mounted oil fill port and an oil drain plug on the bottom, there is a plastic cup, mounted to the deck that extends out from the motor, makes adding oil and oil changes really easy..
Last edited by DadTruck on Thu Mar 22, 2012 11:40 am; edited 1 time in total |
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SlantSixDan
Board Sponsor & Contributor
Joined: 31 Oct 2002
Posts: 21883
Location: North America
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Post subject:
(Thu Mar 22, 2012 10:02 am)
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| wjajr wrote: | | Anyone ever had a Craftsman crank & push start lawn mower c mid-sixties? It had a large folding crank handle mounted on top of engine in place of a rope pull. One would laboriously make five or six cranks, fold the crank back over its self & push down to release a spring that would turn over the engine. |
See my comment above; that was called a "Wind-up" or "Impulse" starter. Very dangerous; too easy to leave the spring wound up such that the mower could start if something happened to bump the starter release trigger...say, while you were clearing a clod of clippings from under the deck or such. And if the engine seized and the starter was wound up, there was no way to release the spring tension without risking serious injury (spring strong enough to break bones) -- the only exception to that one was the Briggs & Stratton unit, which could be disarmed by removing the philips head screw that held the crank to the starter body.
The Craftsman mower that took the cake for hard cold starts was the one with the cheap and nasty venturi tube that didn't rise to the level of being called a carburetor. See here. Despite the article's fawning over the cleverness of it all, it is blindingly obvious the priorities for this system were (1) Cheap, (2) Cheap, and (3) Cheap. It did not last long in production (gee!). Engines thus equipped had no governor. No air vane, no flyweight assembly. The system used airflow thru the venturi/intake pipe to limit engine speed to 3800 rpm, which is considered dangerously fast by today's standards but wasn't back then. Note the shallow fuel tank, which would've been to minimise the tendency of stone-age carbs like this to provide a richer or leaner mixture depending on how high they had to lift the fuel out of the tank (cf Briggs Vacu-Jet)._________________ 一期一会
By birth & parentage: US citizen, 2nd class
By choice: Canadian citizen, 1st class
Last edited by SlantSixDan on Thu Mar 22, 2012 7:36 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Red
Board Sponsor
Joined: 28 Oct 2002
Posts: 606
Location: Santa Cruz, CA
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Post subject:
(Thu Mar 22, 2012 1:20 pm)
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Confusing thread title. 'Til you open it, it's hard to tell which you're musing about: the machines or the geezers who push/ride them...
I guess that makes it a "provocative", not a "confusing" thread title.
Never mind. I guess I was confused to begin with and then the thread title provoked me, what with my being a geezer and all...
I have an old Briggs and Stratton-powered push mower that I bought new back in the late 70s. Have welded old, discarded pieces of Plymouth floor pan to the rusted out deck to hold it together because that motor just refuses to die.
We make a good pair, me and that mower...
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obliquely-inclined state of mind
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Wizard
Turbo Slant 6
Joined: 06 Feb 2004
Posts: 522
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Post subject:
(Thu Mar 22, 2012 2:01 pm)
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Dan, the link to the Craftsman carb is broken. I had misfortune to service many small engines. I find the newer tecumseh is awful in around 1989.
Cheers, Wizard
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DadTruck
Turbo EFI
Joined: 17 Sep 2008
Posts: 1103
Location: Indianapolis
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Post subject:
(Thu Mar 22, 2012 4:27 pm)
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Dan,, the Toro is a LAV 35-40596J
and here are photos of the oil fill port on that Toro,, I had never seen another mower with one of these,, very handy for adding or changing the oil,, don't understand why it was not continued...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/13718356@N02/sets/72157629646714641/
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SlantSixDan
Board Sponsor & Contributor
Joined: 31 Oct 2002
Posts: 21883
Location: North America
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Post subject:
(Thu Mar 22, 2012 7:47 pm)
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Link fixed -- go read up on the don't-say-carburetor.
Toothed flywheel and cut-away left side of the blower shroud tells us this engine or its predecessor was originally equipped with a side-mount, horizontal-engagement, vertical-pull starter, the kind with the round stamped steel spring cover.
Toro and Tecumseh had a few different iterations of that oversized/extra-convenient oil fill setup. Some of them like yours eliminated the vertical dipstick port entirely and filled the block from the side. Others took the place of the simple vertical dipstick and had a plastic funnel with a big domed clear lid, and a spring-loaded pushbutton at the base to let more oil into the block as needed.
Agree that Tecumseh was badly mismanaged starting in the late '80s. MBAzzholes' greedy, shortsighted ways spoiled the company by firing engineers and hiring marketers. In the '50s-'60s-'70s they were ahead of the game by quite a few years and leaps -- mechanical governors in the '60s, ducted air cleaners in the early '70s, a reputation for much easier starting than the competitive Briggs products, owing in large part to their thoughtfully-designed primer-equipped chokeless float carburetors, electronic ignition in '78 five years before Briggs' Magnetron hit the market (but quite a few years after Clinton's really interesting "spark pump" piezoelectric ignition). When Tecumseh's engineering heart was torn out and thrown away, all that went right down the crapper and the company started putting out poorly-made junk. The last item to come out of their gates that I thought was pretty good was their OVRM40/OVRM50 overhead-valve vertical-shaft 4- or 5-horsepower engine. I had one on a 1989 or '90 Toro, and it gave me years of very reliable, efficient service. The only shortcoming was that it was jetted too rich from the factory, and the carburetor had no mixture adjustment needle valve. A letter to the last of Tecumseh's real engineers garnered the p/n for the carb bowl nut equipped with needle valve, and I was able to lean out the mixture and improve everything considerably. I am told I was one of the few who got good service out of that engine -- my guess is the overly-rich jetting washed the oil off the cylinders._________________ 一期一会
By birth & parentage: US citizen, 2nd class
By choice: Canadian citizen, 1st class
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wjajr
Supercharged
Joined: 16 Feb 2008
Posts: 3639
Location: Downeast Maine
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Post subject:
(Fri Mar 23, 2012 2:17 pm)
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I’m quite sure that the Crank & Cuss Sears Roebuck mower used had a carburetor. I may not be remembering clearly on this, but I recall a bowl and other carburetor related looks, and a heavy cast aluminum base. I don’t recall it over revving, and had a throttle speed control.
Speaking of Briggs & Stratton, I recall a similar suck tube type air fuel mixer that is pictured in the Craftsman link Dan posted. I recall dad having to purchase a kit or extra brace to support the weight off fuel tank and intake manifold (for lack of a better word).
What would happen after a few years of use, the manifold would rattle loose from engine causing a vacuum leak. That leak would cause the engine to rhythmically rev up, and throttle down endlessly due to the governor tying to stabilize the set rpm…
Additionally the cycling rpm of the mower would set my mother off to the point she would blow her top, giving me hell for abusing the mower, and to knock it off… Tightening the manifold bolts would only correct the problem for a short while, and she would be on my 12 year old backside again…_________________ 67' Dart GT Convertible; the old Chrysler Corp.
82' LeBaron Convertible; the new Chrysler Corp
07' 300 C AWD; Now by Fiat, the old new Chrysler LLC
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SlantSixDan
Board Sponsor & Contributor
Joined: 31 Oct 2002
Posts: 21883
Location: North America
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Post subject:
(Fri Mar 23, 2012 4:08 pm)
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| wjajr wrote: | | Speaking of Briggs & Stratton, I recall a similar suck tube type air fuel mixer that is pictured in the Craftsman link Dan posted. |
Yes, but Briggs' (they called it a "Vacu-Jet" carburetor) was less rinky-dink. It had a governor and a throttle control. Simple and primitive, but functional. It tended to run richer with the tank near full, and leaner with the tank near empty; specs called for setting the idle mixture with the tank half-full._________________ 一期一会
By birth & parentage: US citizen, 2nd class
By choice: Canadian citizen, 1st class
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Tim Keith
Board Sponsor
Joined: 02 Nov 2002
Posts: 676
Location: San Antonio, Texas
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Post subject:
Re: old mowers and spring
(Sun Mar 25, 2012 3:20 pm)
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| DadTruck wrote: | one of my favorite rites of spring is bringing my old 1972 Wheel Horse Raider 8 Model 1 0330 7,, Kohler Motor,
I purchased this from my dad in 1979,,main lawn cutter, built like an ox, cast iron front and rear axel, high and low drive, could plow with it...
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The Wheel Horse forums are about as active as this one for the slant six. The cast iron Kohlers are hard to beat. The same is true for old Cub Cadets, John Deeres and some of the store brands like Sears Suburban. If you need to do more than cut grass its hard to beat an older garden tractor. In the Wheel Horse 8 speeds first gear/low of the 8 speed is 267.2:1. The same Uni-Drive design was used from 1957 to 2006. Old garden tractors in all varieties of colors are often built better than new models, you'll have to go up to compact tractors to get the rugged build.
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