LordMortis wrote: Fri Jun 12, 2020 6:52 pm
The beautiful thing about Repair Clinic, they are about five miles from my house and most of those miles are up Michigan Ave which is very easy drive.
I got nothing on lawn mower repair. I broke down and got a new one last year when the old one began to piss me off too much and found me spending more time maintaining it than I spent mowing. I think my new rule is, evaluate a new purchase the first time you have to replace the spark plug, because it's all downhill from there. Funny thing about bumps and small engine vibrations and dirt and grass. The combine to eventually make everything either fall apart or rust in place and taking it apart and fitting stuff back together ain't easy.
Last year I had to replace the pull starter cord for the second time. This time I botched the disassembly and had to replace a part after the spring went sproing. Even after getting the replacement part putting it back together in working order was hairy. I ended up spending $50 and an embarrassing number of hours.
As a rule, I've learned to call in professionals rather than try to MacGuyver repairs myself, but the mower was a special case. It being 30 years old, I didn't want to spend the $100 or so to fix it properly -- it's a rusty rattletrap that needs some additional TLC. And me being 63 years old, I didn't want to buy a new mower that will outlive me. For all that I broke my rule, my repair misadventure ended well enough. I should get a few more years out of the old Craftsman -- which, btw, still starts up on the first pull every spring.
In Dae's situation I would've taken my mower down to the gas station that does my car repairs, and they would've used their air wrench to make short work of that stuck bolt, probably free of charge. Then I would've bungled the next step and ended up going to the small engine shop where I should've gone in the first place.