Anyone know of any good sources of information on repair and maintenance of lawnmower (4-stroke) and strimmer (2-stroke) engines?
What is "winterising" your mower?
Haynes workshop manuals actually do a book on lawn mower maintainence, just depends if your make of petrol engine is in there.
Winterising ? We've just hit summer !!! Seriously though, I used to just squib a bit of light oil (3-in-1) through the spark plug hole, lightly turn over the engine to distribute the oil then put the spark plug back in.
Then obviously oil all moving parts that you can see.
Not worth it these days, run it until it gives up the ghost, buy a new one. I've had my mower for over 10 years it's had one oil change, no new filters and has never been serviced. Good value I reckon.
Wintering a lawnmower, yeah it's called sticking it in the shed to be buried under 4 tons of s**t until approx april. Couple of yanks (ooh err) and off she goes.
Thanks for the replies - I see the Haynes manual is available on Amazon.
I also found the Honda engine manual for my mower (on Honda's website) there are some instructions in there about what you should do before storing the mower for long periods - basically I think it's just emptying the fuel tank and draining the carburettor.
I think this might be important because I bought a 2-stroke strimmer from B&Q last summer and over the winter the fuel lines perished and cracked so that it is now useless. Unfortunately I did not keep the receipt, can't find the instructions either but I wonder if there's something in there about emptying the fuel out of it before winter, which I should have done.
I don't want a similar thing to happen to my mower...
If you bought it from B&Q, take it back, receipt or no receipt, they'll change it. The staff behind the returns counter basically don't give a monkeys, it's not there money and the customer is always right/needs to be kept happy.
Obviously, I would never abuse this situation,. , know what I mean ?
That's what I did, my mountfield lasted 13 years and only topped up the oil when needed. I traded it in and they gave me £50 for it!
My mum's paid £55 for a yearly service (she still won't listen to me ) so the money I've saved paid for the new one
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