Lawnmower

I have tried starting my lawnmower several times and it just wouldn’t cooperate. I knew that having gas sit in the thing for months at a time was bad for it, but I didn’t know what to do about that. I didn’t want to siphon it out…I didn’t know you could buy siphoning kits until today…and I wasn’t sure how else to get rid of it.

I had heard of tune-up kits that you can buy for lawnmowers so I decided that after dropping Owen off at school I would hop over to Lowe’s and see if they had something like this. The very friendly, but completely uneducated man who happened to be in the lawnmower section steered me away from a kit and insisted all I needed was a new spark plug. Okay. We talked for a little while, me insisting that I would need to go home and check the size and get more information about my spark plug before purchasing a new one and him insisting that as long as I got one for “lawn and garden” it would be okay.

What!?

I’m standing right there in the aisle with an array of all different sizes and shapes of small motor spark plugs gleaming in front of me. I was trying not to make the man feel stupid, but c’mon…

Finally another man approached. His vest was a different color, thereby signifying greater importance and apparently a little experience in the lawnmower fixing department. He told me to do whatever it takes to get the old gas out of the mower and get new gas into the mower. If that didn’t make it run, then try replacing the spark plug, if it still wasn’t running I should check the air-filter. If cleaning or replacing the air filter didn’t do the trick I would probably need someone to take the carburetor apart for me. Well, that didn’t sound so difficult. My only question at that point was, would I rather go through all those steps, or just assume the worst and take it to someone who knows what they’re doing? I didn’t want to try to figure out how to get it to someone’s shop either, so I started with the gas.

It was not too hard getting it out. I turned the mower upside down and poured it into a tin pan. Then I took a long screwdriver and an old burp rag and cleaned the gas tank up a little. I wrapped the screwdriver in the rag and ran it around inside until I got a lot of the gunk out. Then I needed new fuel. The boys and I went to the Shell station and got $3.00 worth of gas and headed back home. I put the new fuel in the tank and pulled the starter. It started, but only for about 4 seconds.

Now, I don’t know a lot about motors, but in my mind that meant that the spark plug was fine. I could be dead wrong but I thought that if the spark plug were bad it wouldn’t start at all. I tried several times again and again and the same thing happened. I messed with the throttle (I think that’s what it’s called…it’s the part that has the little turtle on one end and the rabbit on the other end) and made sure to push the little pump mechanism. Same result. So I took the air filter off and it was pretty dirty. I tried cleaning it and it actually ran better. But the motor still wouldn’t run for more than 10 or 15 seconds at a time.

I prayed. I had been praying about it, but I finally realized I probably wasn’t praying the right prayer. I had been saying things like, “God, you know how this mower works, please let this work. Please make it run.” Instead of things like, “God, you said you would be my guide, please lead me to do the right thing to make this mower run.” When I prayed that prayer I felt led (not moved, not inspired, more like peaceful resignation) to go buy a new air filter. So we three got back in the van again and headed back to Lowes. I brought the old filter with me and the nice young lady working in the section went right to the correctly numbered replacement and for $8.00 we had a nice clean air filter.

We were hungry by then so I took the boys down to Chick-fil-a. I could have taken them home for lunch, but then I would have had to fix their lunch, clean up their lunch and put them to bed. This way…all I had to do was buy their lunch, throw away their trash, take them home and put them to bed.

So…I got the air filter on and it worked. It still took lots of starts before it stayed running but each time it started I got more encouragement from the amount of time it would stay on. I think, and I wouldn’t give anyone any advice based on what I think regarding lawnmowers, that as it ran it was correcting itself by burning out any of the old fuel and blowing out any of the dirt that the old air filter may have allowed. It seemed to run more and more smoothly as I mowed.

So…all of that to say…I cut my grass today.

Really, what most amazed me about all that was how much I enjoyed it. I really liked getting my hands dirty and taking things apart and wiping them clean and checking the fluids and figuring out what the problem was. I liked doing it myself and I really liked investing myself in my lawnmower and in my lawn. It’s the same feeling I get when I bake from scratch, make my own butter or better yet make a cake with the butter that I made.

Now, I need a shower. Blech…I smell like gasoline.

I only wish now that I had a before and after picture of my lawn. Only then would you realize the desperation I felt that made me overlook my intimidation of fixing that lawnmower. It was bad…real bad.