It ran fine last autumn, sat all winter with fuel in it, and now it will not start. The shop quoted a diagnostic fee plus a carburettor clean, a blade sharpen and an oil change, and it comes to about 140 with a two week wait. I own basic hand tools and have never taken a carburettor off anything. At what point is a four year old push mower not worth the money?
The engine decides this, not the mower. A Honda or a Briggs with a normal parts supply is worth fixing repeatedly, an unbranded engine from a shed brand where nobody stocks a carburettor is not, no matter how new. Look at what is cast into the engine before you decide anything.
From the shop side, the number breaks down as a bench fee to look at it, then labour by the hour or by a flat rate for common jobs, then parts at retail. A carb clean and service is a routine flat rate job everywhere I have worked. The jobs where I tell homeowners to buy new are anything involving valves, a scored bore, or a bent crank from hitting something solid, because the labour alone passes the price of a new machine.
Ask whether the diagnostic fee comes off the repair if you go ahead. Both shops near me do it and neither offers unless you ask first.
Valves, a scored bore or a bent crank as the replace line is exactly what I was missing. I had no idea where that boundary sat.
Before you spend anything, pull the plug and check for spark, then tip a capful of fresh fuel down the plug hole and see if it fires for two seconds. That five minute test tells you whether you have a fuel problem, which is cheap, or an ignition problem, which sometimes is not.
I am the person who pays the 140 and I do not regret it. My weekend is worth more to me than the difference, the shop guarantees the work, and I get the blade balanced properly which I never did well myself. The calculation is not repair versus replace, it is repair versus replace versus what else you would be doing on Saturday.
Whatever you decide, run the tank dry in the autumn or put stabiliser in it. I have not had a spring no start since I started doing that and it costs about the price of a coffee a year.
@two_week_notice · last mo. · 3 replies
Most of that quote is labour and most of the labour is one job. Four bolts, a fuel line, a carburettor off, the bowl and the main jet cleaned, back on, and it is running. Do that once yourself and the mower is worth keeping for another five years, because fuel left over winter is the cause of about four out of five spring no starts.
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@question_jar · last mo.
Two. Do not lose the tiny spring behind the throttle plate, and photograph the linkage before you unhook anything. Everything else on a mower carb is forgiving.
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@septic_sean · last mo.
Is there a point in that job where I can make it worse in a way I cannot undo?
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