The Great Big Lawnmower Thread

This Honda engined Castelgarden variable speed on sale at €710 will eat the rough stuff,

https://www.toolfix.ie/p/castelgarden-xs55hvw4-21-cut-self-drive-lawnmower/xs55hvw4

then haggle with your remaining €800 for a good robotic machine for the inner circle. You'll never be stuck with both, and if you tame the outer area with the CG, you could let the robot loose on it when its short, light and dry.

It would be perfect, it's recommended area is 2000m2, roughly a half acre, so your grass area is what's left after house and drive of 320m2 are subtracted. It has three features that will help cope with rougher areas, a decent top cut height of 8.5 cm, variable speed to take it slower, and that Honda GCVx 170 engine. My previous gaff was a standard bungalow bliss on a half acre, the Stiga55, an early variant of this mower with a B&S engine was ideal size, good exercise. You'll walk over 3km to mow 1600m2 with a .53m cut. If you want a bigger cut, there are a few 55cm out there, and the huge twin bladed Toro timemaster, but you're better with more power and walking speed to get the job done quicker. You can easily spend 1000-1500 on some heavier semi commercial machines, or premium brand names such as Honda, Stihl, Husqvarna, Weibang etc.

There are two black cables in your photo, one connected to the green multiplug, the other one on the bottom of the image just runs off the frame. Where is the wire you refer to on the top of the picture? Make of the mower also might help, image of dashboard, but its likely a black wire would be going to a chassis terminal, or providing battery negative to a switch or device, perhaps an electric clutch pull switch. Or the starter solenoid

That looks like a bit of home brew wiring going on from the connector, I see what looks like a length of mains brown and blue flex in a white outer leaving it. That grey cable could be the pair up to the front headlamps? Or possibly from the rectifier ( these mowers charge the battery from a pickup coil). The headlight cable is very insecure on those mowers, always hanging off.

The Stiga is in a different class. Bigger cut, bigger engine than the 46cm woodies generic, better build and with the distribution network of Doyles behind them. Ring some of the dealers listed on Doyles site (they don't sell direct), see can you get a price better than the list. It's well priced for brand mower with a 53cm cut, the engine is Stiga's own.

Closer to your budget max, you might like this Husqvarna 53cm. It has a well proven Briggs and Stratton 650exi series engine, and a solid composite deck, meaning no rust, and deft handling due to its light 32kg weight. I was most impressed by this as an alternative to alloy deck, handles, wheels, cables were of high quality also.

I can think of two things it might be going from memory, its been a good few years since I peered into my long gone TC102. Depending on the engine, it might have an oil pressure switch, though I don't recall one on my V twin engine. What I do recall though was an innocent looking ground wire which push fitted onto a tag on the engine block. This seemed to act as a ground for all the interlock switches which would kill the engine if you if you triggered them without cutting off the blade drive. E.g., if you sat up off the seat, or tilted the grass box with the deck still running, the engine dies. One day I noticed this not happening, and discovered a single uncoupled cable close to a terminal tag on the engine block. Pushing it back on restored the interlock. Pulling it off allowed engagement of the blade while not in the seat, dodgy, but useful for fault finding deck noises and belt problems. Also useful for cutting without the bag and spreading the grass behind. This was in my 1998 TC102, manual deck belt clutch. I doubt if there's much difference in subsequent years, though models with electric clutch will just release the clutch rather than cut the engine when an interlock switch is closed. There are no color coded schematic of the wiring, I never found one before, only this generic electrical layout in the parts list.

Here's something that will help. I dug up some older manuals I had for tc102, 1999. There's full wiring diagram with color coding. Page 51 for the 16hp manual transmission, 54 for hydrostatic, and page 44 or 46 for electrical parts layout. Download below. Should be identical to 1997, but I know where to dig for that. If its any different, I'll post it.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1W4V-6Wy5MM7HaHYQRdsy4_Rypm_r6Yzj/view?usp=drivesdk