Lawnmower Help

[Noah Alkinburgh]

Oh great gear heads of the Creek Please come to my aid!!! :)

So yesterday I pull out my mower which I have had for a year and notice some dark wet spots under the air filter. I touch it to see if its fuel and it doesn't really smell that way but does smell like petroleum a bit. I figured it was some water and gas that was on the deck. So I pull it out and start to mow and it is sputtering a coughing and just generally not running good. So I pull off the cover to the air filter and it is soaked. So I though maybe some water had gotten in their and it couldn't breath so I start to wring it out and it is oil!!! I wrung it out as best I could put it back and the mower ran well for the most part. Now my questions are these:

Did something very bad happen to my mower? Is it going to die?

How could the oil have gotten there? I had it on its side to clean under the deck last time but it was tipped so the air filter was on top not on the bottom.

Should I be concerned?

Should I get a new air filter?

Please help me out here. If I ruined my mower my wife is gonna kill me...she will make me sell my lathe guaranteed.

Noah

[Lee Schierer]

Two stroke or four cycle?

Most air filters for lawn mowers are washed with soapy water, dried and then you place a teaspoon of oil on them and squish them in your hand to spread out the oil. The oil catches the dirt. They should be rewashed at least once per year.

It sounds like maybe your fuel float stuck and gas ran out into the air filter. It happens. Clean the filter, reoil it and you should be good for a couple of months.

If it is a four cycle engine, check the level of oil in the crankcase too. Make sure it doesn't smell like gas. If it does, change it.

Lee

[Ted Shrader]

Noah -

Go ahead and replace the air filter. Call it the one "act of God" failure. If it happens again, then look a little further for the problem.

What probably happened . . . When you had it on its side, oil ran up the fill tube. When you put it back upright the oil found its way to the filter. The motor was sputtering because it was running way too rich due to the clogged filter.

If enough oil ran out of the inside of a broken motor through some other path (crack, etc.), the motor would most likely not even run at all.

Good luck,

Ted