The Great Big Lawnmower Thread

We really should do a basic troubleshooting list for small engines as the same stuff comes up over and over.

I think thats only out in the county where they keep buckets full of old rusty nuts and bolts just in case.

One job I was on they kept and straightened out old used fencing staples.

Oil capacity on that (from the manual) is 3 pints. Now is that US pints or UK pints either way its a lot more than one liter more like 1.4 liters if US pints or 1.7 liters UK if UK pints so put in another half liter and I bet its much nearer the top mark when the dipsick is resting on that lip.

However the manual states

You can get the manual from manualslib.com

Edit> Do you have the standard CTH 151 or the XP version? XP version has a fuel filter and takes a little more oil 3.8 pints if you change the oil filter.

Personally I'd go by the actual volume of oil they say you need for the engine. See where that is on the dipstick then use that as your mark. tbh you can't 100% rely on the manual, can't remember what it was now but I know my Honda manual has at least one major error in it.

However that engine comes with that silly easy oil change feature and the question is did you completely drain the oil? Any chance there was still half a liter left in the engine after you drained the oil? I keep an eye on how much comes out on an oil change, not because of your dipstick issue but because its quicker to know that you had enough old oil and that you drained out say a liter because then you can bang a liter of fresh oil in without having to keep checking the dipstick.

Its not like you have to worry about burning out a catalytic converter with too much oil, too little on the other hand won't do you any good.

What I think I'd do here is check what engine that is exactly it may be branded Husquvarna but I think its a Kohler. Dig around and find out exactly which one then find the manual for that engine and see what that says about the quantity of oil required.

Edit> So its a Kohler Model SV470 which according to this http://www.kohlerengines.com/engines/onlinecatalog/pdf/sm_20_690_01.pdf only takes 1.04 to 1.3l of oil so you seem to be in the right area with one liter.

And again from the Kohler engine manual

So wiht special thanks to @deezell for all the advice, we bought a brand new Mountfield 827H. It was delivered during the week, and we took it out today.

It looks amazing, but blows a lot of white smoke when started and more when moving, so we've had to stop.

The internet says it's mostly likely oil, and i could see how oil might havebeen spilled in the course of delivery. dipping the oil suggests it's a little too full.

Any advice? We can't use it as is, as it's polluting u the neighbourhood. the people we bought it from are closed on Saturdays

Brilliant - thank you

So we rang the seller, who advised running it for a while to burn off the oil that was causing the white smoke. that seemed to work, to be fair. We figured out how we needed to clear the grass output, as it had stopped collecting. We're probably making all kinds of rookie errors since this is our first ride-on lawnmower

But now the thing won't start at all. It's not dead when you turn the key - it makes a rattley noise - but the engine doesn't kick in

It's brand new, so surely it can't be the battery? The spark plug and all those things seem to be connected pretty well. We've topped it up with petrol (and yes, petrol was the right choice)

the seller, of course, closed at lunchtime :(

What are we missing?

If it won't start are you sure none of the safety mechanisms are engaged? Out of gear in neutral (or no pressure on the pedal) blades off, grass box on, sometimes brake on, someone sat on the seat?

The battery connectors (on the bottom left of the photo above) seem fine. there's this other thing (bottom centre) that looks designed to take two wires, but there's nothing there.

is that normal?

and apologies for what are certainly stupid questions ...

thanks soooo much, @deezell

We probably need to pick up a charger

Don't pay the rediculus money for the genuine charger. Any half decent car battery charger will do the job. You know the one I recommend if you go back a few posts.

don't mean to flog a dead horse - but if the board is faulty then would the lights on the dash light up? cause all of them do

when suppose to

There's no limit to the symptoms of any particular fault on a circuit board. A single dry solder joint may manifest as just one function failing, e.g, lights or buzzer or whatever, or it could take out the whole board if it occurred on a power rail. With a meter you trace the lack of signalling to the board from the grassbag full lever. Good practice to start in the middle, say at the board where the switch circuit comes in. If you're getting an open/close on the terminal, then something on the board is causing it. It should be easy to identify the buzzer pins, redo the solder on them, check there is some continuity on the buzzer. Theres a bit of logic circuitry between the buzzer and the full lever, but if the icon for bag full shows, then its only the buzzer or the circuit driving it that's at fault. This stuff is fiddly at best to fault find, especially without a detailed circuit diagram, but most times it's a bad connector, relay, or a dry solder joint before it's actually faulty hardware.

yes, its just the 'box full buzzer' that's giving me gip - the mechanic i gave it to said its not the 'buzzer' its the board itself, and the simplistic thing to do is just replace the board

(maybe he doesn't want to spend time fault finding & diagnosing?)