Let's Talk About Our Bad Old Lawnmowers

Our house came with a mid nineties Murray 42" lawn tractor that had been vaguely neglected. I fought and fixed that heap of junk every time I had to mow for damn near 15 years. When the motor finally blew up I CL'd it for $50 right where it sat and bought a 42" Gravely commercial zero turn with 0% financing. Suddenly cutting our property took 1/4 the time it used to and I got my Saturdays back. I was just thinking last weekend, that mower is the best $4k I've spent in years. Screw fixing utility crap, I'd rather spend that time on fixing fun stuff like cars and boats.

ultraclyde said:

Our house came with a mid nineties Murray 42" lawn tractor that had been vaguely neglected. I fought and fixed that heap of junk every time I had to mow for damn near 15 years. When the motor finally blew up I CL'd it for $50 right where it sat and bought a 42" Gravely commercial zero turn with 0% financing. Suddenly cutting our property took 1/4 the time it used to and I got my Saturdays back. I was just thinking last weekend, that mower is the best $4k I've spent in years. Screw fixing utility crap, I'd rather spend that time on fixing fun stuff like cars and boats.

Perfect!  Our house came with a worn out leaking rear drive Snapper.  I put new seals on it and gave it away.  Bought a Hustler Fastrak 52" deck with a 20HP Honda V-twin.  That was 2003.  That Fastrak still runs great!

Had to mow the lawn today, thought of this thread so I took pics for your entertainment.

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You need to rebody that thing!

nedc said:

You need to rebody that thing!

I tried to buy a new deck. Too expensive. I've been watching CL for one with dead engine, none have showed up. Today ended up being it's last day as the flex got so bad the blade finally really grabbed hard into the deck metal. I've had astronomical hospital bills so gonna watch for a good used mower for sale and borrow a neighbors if I need to mow before I find one. I loaned that one out many many times so they owe me..

Small yard, no need for a rider/tractor.

When we moved in to our house, it came with a Craftsman front drive walk-behind, that had the cover off of the drive mechanism, probably so he could more easily spray belt dressing on the belt (as opposed to changing the worn out belt). The spark plug was probably original, I'm sure the oil was.

I had previously owned a really nice self propelled Honda, but had given it to my practice manager when she bought her first house (we had been in rentals for 5 years, someone needed to be using it).

After the Honda, it really sucked to go through the first year with that Craftsman. In the summer here the grass grows so fast that after more than 5 days, I would have to limit myself to 1/3 of the uncut section on each pass. Cured the hard-start with an air cleaner and spark plug at least.

The second year, I spotted a Husqvarna rear drive in clearance at the Lowe's, and while it doesn't compare to the Honda, the BS motor started every time, and it got the job done. Then my wife tried to mow the cast iron pipe next to the fire hydrant, and bent the crank.

I wasn't really ready to pay $700 for another Honda, but then one my veterinary assistants said that she had a mower that she didn't use, and I could have it. Same model, exactly, thirty minutes of use. The carb was gummed up from sitting for a few years with ethanol. Swapped the carb, back in business with a parts mower to boot.

The teenage son finally got old enough to take over the mowing, and now I don't have to listen to my wife complain how much she misses the Honda.

An old Lawnboy 42" riding mower was included with our farm when we bought it. It lasted a few years before every use turned into a repair. I bought a Toro zero turn but SWMBO didn't like it and wanted to go back to a tractor style. This prompted me to pick up a nice used Craftsman with a 48" deck and hydrostatic trans.  I then sold the zero turn. Unfortunately I'm now doing ninety percent of the grass cutting so I ended up buying a 60" gently used commercial zero turn for myself.  We've been using an old 2 stroke Lawnboy push mower to cut around a line of trees that are to close together to get our riding mowers between but it's a pain. I'm now contemplating buying a small 32" zero turn just for this purpose. 
 

Monday I went out to mow for the first cut of the season.  Cord snapped off on my first pull......

22" Troy-Bilt Honda motor.  It's 10 years old and has been limping along the last couple of years with really hard starting when cold, I've sharpened the blade many times, the wheels are smooth and the self propelled function is super weak.  I could repair most of it's problems but parts would run nearly $100 and it would still be 10 years old.

Home Depot has a brand new one of exactly the same model for $300 (which is what the old one cost 10 years ago).  I have better things to mess with than a tired mower.

I got a free deck from a friend who was going to scrap it, slapped on a $99 Predator 5HP engine and a new blade, and the thing is a horse.  Starting the 3rd season with it now, first start in a few months I hit the priming bulb a few times and it fired up first pull.

The "main" mower is a late-90's Simplicity 18 horse 48" hydro tractor with power steering.  It, too, fired up first thing after hybernation. Super heavy garden tractor, a real tank.  The Vanguard v-twin engine is known for tossing rods if they get a bit low on oil, so I'm super anal about checking it every time I mow.  Luckily it doesn't burn any.

"Big" tractor (as my 3 year old son calls it, Daddy's Scoop Tractor) is an 18 horse 3 cylinder Yanmar diesel 4x4 with a bucket.  It leaks, the switch doesn't work so I start it by jumping the starter with a screwdriver that lives in the footwell, and the alternator quit so I have to trickle charge the battery.  But I got it for 1/4 the price of an equivalent new tractor, and it has no (more) electrical things to go wrong.  I really need to fix a new hydraulic leak, and at some point it would be nice to have working brakes, but it does what I need it to do.  

I've been mowing since I was about 8. Something I learned, when you have enough property to maintain, buy something good once. 

I've had my own yard for 23 years.  Push mower #2 died the end of last summer.  I had spent about $450 total over the 23 years or about $20/year on mowers, blades, air cleaners, and oil.  Everything but gas is in that $20/year.  Last night I spent big $ and ordered a new battery powered Ryobi 40v with 2 6.0 ah batteries and a charger.  Cost me $510 with taxes and will be here the middle of next week.  I wonder if I can get 25 years out of it? ;)

Started a tune up on this snapper high wheel walk behind today. It needs a new drive wheel and disc for the self propel. Going to replace all the belts and tune up the motor too. This thing is a beast. Its just my extra mower. I think i paid like 35$ for it. I did a bunch of landscaping,  now my big rider wont fit. Gotta get this one back up to snuff

oh and engine hoists are lovely things to have around. 

I can't remember the last time I paid for a lawnmower.  I get free ones more frequently than I need a replacement.

The one I used last year was my neighbor's old one that he gave me when he moved out.  It is a super-bare-bones Craftsman with zero options.  Mulch or throw depending on if you have the side chute on.  The sticker is faded and hard to read, but I think it's a 2000 model.

The one I got for this year (nothing wrong with the old one) was a nice Cub Cadet 621 with the swivel casters up front.  Someone set it out for trash because (as far as I can tell) the only thing wrong was that the cable for the self-propel had come out of the handle.  5 minutes and it started and drove on the first pull.  I splurged on that one and had my neighbor sharpen the blade for $5.

When I was in TX, I had a perfectly good mower that I fished out of the weeds at a location that our business had acquired.  Then one day my wife left for work in her shiny W210 and about 5 minutes later she came back with the window down and her arm outside holding the handle of a nice Yard Man.  That was a picture and a half.  My affluent-looking wife all dressed up for work in a Mercedes dragging home someone else's trash with her arm out the window.  She paused in front of the driveway, waved, and shoved the mower into the lawn and drove away.

I also have a 1976 Bolens 14hp hydrostat that runs like a dream... if you consider 14hp from a single cylinder Tecumseh a "dream."  That thing will shake the fillings out of your teeth, but it's a good old-school cast iron thing.  I never use it because I currently own 0.2 acres, so it lives in dad's barn.  Dad got that thing for $100 at an auction sale that was full of quilting stuff and collectible china.  He said that none of the 40 women or the 5 gay men there seemed to be interested in bidding on a tractor.

Curtis73 said:

 also have a 1976 Bolens 14hp hydrostat that runs like a dream... if you consider 14hp from a single cylinder Tecumseh a "dream."  That thing will shake the fillings out of your teeth, but it's a good old-school cast iron thing.  I never use it because I currently own 0.2 acres, so it lives in dad's barn.  Dad got that thing for $100 at an auction sale that was full of quilting stuff and collectible china.  He said that none of the 40 women or the 5 gay men there seemed to be interested in bidding on a tractor.

Growing up, my neighbor had that tractor, or at least one very similar to it.  I recall as a kid thinking that tractor was a massive old tank of a thing...shaft drives everywhere, and a giant exhaust stack with one of those flappy things on the top.  My neighbor, an old German man who maintained everything but also got his money's worth out of everything, had that tractor to pieces more times than I can count- I know he completely overhauled the 14 horse one-lung Tecumseh at least once.  You always knew when he was cutting the grass- when the Bolens fired up the whole neighborhood knew.  One time he fashioned some brackets to attach a little 20" push mower on the side of the deck to increase the cutting width.  He also had a snow thrower attachment for it.  His driveway was pretty small, so just one pass down the side, move the cars over, and a pass dwn the other side, and it was done.

No idea what ended up happening to that thing....at some point as he got older he bought some new tractor to mow with and the Bolens got parked.  When he died a couple of years ago I don't recall seeing it in his garage as it got cleaned out, so maybe he'd found it a new home?  Or maybe some tinkering-minded relative ended up with it.  Here's hoping it's still around....somewhere.  

My brother (who lurks on here sometimes) has an old Bolens he's been working on for a while.  The problem is parts are gettng really hard to find for them, as Bolens got bought out by MTD.  I don't even know if they sell Bolens branded stuff anymore.  Pretty much all you can find anymore is stuff that someone else has squirreled away, NOS and all that.  Or you end up fabricating bits.  

bobzilla said:

Something I learned, when you have enough property to maintain, buy something good once. 

Same here. When we moved into this house a year and a half ago, I bit the bullet and bought a new commercial 61" Scag with a fuelie Kohler engine on it. We maintain 4-4.5 acres of this property and can get it mowed in under 2 hours. The time savings in a faster, more modern mower AND in spending less time repairing an old one seemed worth it to me.

1989 MTD bought as a back-up about 5 years ago for the 24HP Vtwin Craftsman that was being used to cut ~3AC yard.  The Vtwin dropped a pushrod into the sump, shortly thereafter and I never tried to fix it.  MTD became "Primary".  A few things have broken, like the steering arm and the belt pulley set on the crankshaft and I have changed the belts once as well as blades.  But, the thing is stupid simple and easy to work on, the parts are not expensive (usually under $40 on Amazon) and for whatever reason, doesn't get stuck as easily as the Craftsman did.
I know it won't last forever, but I can't afford a zero-turn, right now.  So, I'll just tough it out until I can.  Or, if the MTD has a catastrophic failure, I'll be cruizin' Craigslist, or FB Marketplace, again 

Professor_Brap said:

Any old push mower with a rusty deck gets turned into a battery charger. 

My interest is  piqued.  

1970 something MTD 990, rebadged as a "Columbia".  It is a tank, weighs 1000lb or so.  I impulse bought it last fall for $100,  runs but needs a bunch of work, and it has become one of  my lockdown projects this weekend.  I have a little Simplicity tractor that I mow with, but it has a hard time pulling anything, so I figure I can use this as a tug.

I bought a old school push mower with no motor when Mrs. DX and I moved into our house 8 years ago from Lowes for a $100. No issues since then, blades never sharpened and if something gets stuck, you just bang it or kick it to get it out..

Here's my current fleet:



On the left is a Troy Bilt LTX-1842, and on the right is a Toro Super Recycler mower. Both were hand-me-downs from my dad when I bought my house 10 years ago.

Let's start with the Troy Bilt: My dad bought it around 2000 from Lowes. He always had problems with it, but knowing my dad, he basically deferred all maintenance on it for years and just complained that it was a POS. By the time he gave it to me, it barely ran, the muffler had fallen off, and it was leaking oil out of the valve cover. Over the years, I've re-attached the muffler (bolts were loose, nothing wrong with the muffler itself), re-sealed the leaky valve cover, replaced the belts and blades, replaced one of the tie rod ends, and replaced the starter solenoid. It runs great and cuts well now!

The Toro Super Recycler was bought new from a Toro dealer around 1996. It has a bag and it's self-propelled with 3 forward gears, and has a 6hp GTS5 engine. It's built better than the typical big box store ones, and it has a cast aluminum deck. This one has been the best mower I've ever used, but it's been getting long in the tooth these past few seasons. The engine seems to use oil now, and it has an issue running at full throttle after hitting a rock a couple years back. That said, it still starts first pull every time. I'm thinking it's going to need some maintenance big time this season, and part of that might include a new engine.

My dad always seems to come across random small engine-equipped things, and I think I'm supposed to pick up another mower from him that he has after this virus blows over.

As you guys know I'm a cheap SOB.  My current mower I bought for $50 off CL.  Very well maintained by a OCD retired guy.  It looked brand new except he said he would just stop running on him.  He said he replaced everything but never fixed it.  The only fix was let it sit and try it in a couple of hours.  I ran it a couple of seasons with no problem.  Let the ex borrow last fall and she says it died on her and won't restart.  We just now got around to looking at it.  No spark so ordered a coil and hopefully that's it.

Tony Sestito said:

Here's my current fleet:



On the left is a Troy Bilt LTX-1842, and on the right is a Toro Super Recycler mower. Both were hand-me-downs from my dad when I bought my house 10 years ago.

Let's start with the Troy Bilt: My dad bought it around 2000 from Lowes. He always had problems with it, but knowing my dad, he basically deferred all maintenance on it for years and just complained that it was a POS. By the time he gave it to me, it barely ran, the muffler had fallen off, and it was leaking oil out of the valve cover. Over the years, I've re-attached the muffler (bolts were loose, nothing wrong with the muffler itself), re-sealed the leaky valve cover, replaced the belts and blades, replaced one of the tie rod ends, and replaced the starter solenoid. It runs great and cuts well now!

The Toro Super Recycler was bought new from a Toro dealer around 1996. It has a bag and it's self-propelled with 3 forward gears, and has a 6hp GTS5 engine. It's built better than the typical big box store ones, and it has a cast aluminum deck. This one has been the best mower I've ever used, but it's been getting long in the tooth these past few seasons. The engine seems to use oil now, and it has an issue running at full throttle after hitting a rock a couple years back. That said, it still starts first pull every time. I'm thinking it's going to need some maintenance big time this season, and part of that might include a new engine.

My dad always seems to come across random small engine-equipped things, and I think I'm supposed to pick up another mower from him that he has after this virus blows over.

Since the weather is starting to get better, I decided to drag out the mowers today to do seasonal maintenance. The tractor's battery was stone dead (0.0 volts!) so I tried charging it, but after a number of cycles, I can only get it up to about 80%. That's probably not long for this world.

The real story here is the Toro. Last I left it, I was ready to replace the thing. I decided to change the plug, put in some fresh oil, and see if I could get it running right.
 

This was the plug:



I don't think I have ever seen a plug fouled that bad. It was a miracle it ran at all! But, that's A LOT of oil getting on there. This oil is admittedly ancient. It was really, really old, so I drained it and added new stuff along with some Marvel Mystery Oil to the oil and gas. Of course, like always, it fired first pull. But it still wasn't running right. I decided to pull the cover for the carb off, and was surprised to see an air filter in there! I had assumed it didn't have one; I have never checked.

This was AFTER some cleaning:


With the air filter off, it runs PERFECT.

The entire time, it was the damn air filter choking the carb and making it run like crap. I have a new one on order. I feel like an idiot.

I have this, it's like a year and a half old. The deck has fallen off twice, the starter solenoid needed replaced, the battery killed itself and one of the cooling blades for the hydrostatic trans warped so now it throws the drive belt off the second you start it.

It also takes longer to start than my 15 year old husqvarna push mower with the sticky choke and the 1983 power king tractor. It's a piece of E36 M3 and I hate it.

So I have a neighbor who is moving away who I have been socially distanced walking and talking with (from the other side of the road) for awhile. He had a lawn tractor he needed to get rid of that he was told had a bad transmission. It's a John Deere x300 with the hydrostatic. I said I was interested, as I have been brewing an idea of making something similar to a cyclekart using lawn tractor parts. Well, he said it was mine for nothing, just haul it away. Just finished looking at it. Needs a $18 pulley replaced. Told him and offered it back repaired, but he said keep it (his new house is in a community with lawn service, so he didn't need it.). It's got a smaller deck than my old Sears, so it's likely not a real upgrade for me. I figure it's worth the $20 to test the motor if I do poach it for a kart (18hp Kawasaki twin). Either that or I can sell it as a working mower. I'll never understand mechanics, especially small engine ones. He was told it needed a $600 replacement trans by the mower shop.

so the above was lifted from  FB post i made.  3 friends reached out wanting to buy it....   i need to see if it cuts faster than my old sears despite the smaller deck.

In reply to Grizz :

If thats one from a big box store, im not surprised. I'll take a peek occasionally, mostly because i see the high price, then look at the mower and yeah, nothing impressive. Throw-aways unfortunately. 

Thats why i stick with much cheaper older used stuff.