(first posted 4/7/2016. The B&S on that Sears magnesium deck finally wore out last year. I found a fairly recent cheap little mower with a B&S engine at the curb, and I couldn’t resist. It needed a new head gasket and then ran like a champ. I didn’t like the cheap steel deck, as it had a bar on the bottom of the side discharge that tended to plug up. Our grass here gets very heavy in the spring, and I don’t mow often. I need an unobstructed side discharge to plow through it quickly. So I mounted that engine on this ancient lightweight deck; works like a charm, even in the thickest grass and weeds.
But: I have a new tenant with a teenage son, and his dad bought him a mower and string trimmer, and I’ve hired him to mow the large common yard at my cluster of rentals. Yea! Now I’m down to just the group home down the alley where my daughter lives.)
I love vintage lawnmowers, and not just because I pick them up for free from the curb (or $5, for the Lawn Boy). It’s because they’re super light (the Sears in front has a magnesium deck, the Lawn Boy an aluminum one), and they have a side discharge, because I don’t bag and haul off the very stuff grass likes to feed on.
Well, mowing season started here with a vengeance about ten days ago; since I have several properties to deal with, so it was time to wheel out my preferred rig, the 60’s Sears deck that I swapped on a very healthy Briggs and Stratton engine from the early 80s or so. An engine that always starts on the first, or possibly second pull, even after a very long dormancy. Not this year; not the slightest sign of life. Good thing I had the Lawn Boy as a backup.
I picked up this LB model 7268 a few years back for $5 at our local recycling center. it was marked “Parts”. But it called to me, and I took it home, knowing it was a risk, having long wanted to have a LB. They have such a devoted following for being rugged and long-lived. And when I was about 12 to 14 or so, I mowed several neighbors’ lawns, two of which had Lawn Boys.
One was very ancient, like this one, with an exposed flywheel-fan, and no recoil starter. One just wound the pull rope around the pulley on top, gave a good yank, and….it purred to life, with that distinctive LB two-stroke puff of blue smoke and oily smell. Exposure to it at an early age leaves one with a permanent taste for both of them.
My LB started up quite readily, but it didn’t purr quite as nicely as they should; there was a metallic overtone to it. When I took off the muffler to check if the exhaust ports were clean, I noticed that there was a bit of play when I wiggled the crankshaft back and forth. No wonder someone donated it to the recycling center; a damaged crankshaft or rod. But it runs just fine, and the noise isn’t really all that bad bad.
When I last wrote up my fleet of featherweight lawnmowers back in 2011, this 1964 or so Montgomery Wards was my primary machine. I had picked it up from a curb, where it had been discarded. I was mainly attracted to its light aluminum deck. The poor engine was totally devoid of oil, and barely turned. Someone had just run it until it ran dry and it finally stopped. On a lark, I put in some oil, and kept pulling, lo and behold, it got easier and easier, and soon enough it fired up with a belch of smoke and ran, quite well too. And I used it for several years. But its compression was never good (made for very easy starting, though), and eventually, it just sort of faded out. I got four years more use after its first death. And the deck is still good; the problem is finding an engine with just the right length shaft; they vary.
So this became my front-line defense against grass. The deck is a 60s vintage Sears, of magnesium, for ultimate lightness. Obviously, it’s been repaired along the way by a previous owner, due to structural deficiency.
There are also holes in the deck; I’m not sure from what exactly. But they get plugged up by tufts of grass. The Sears engine, which were made by Tecumseh, is long gone, but I found this early 80s vintage B&S with a vertical-pull starter somewhere, and its still in the prime of its (long) life. This puppy will rip through calf-high grass.
Well, if it would start. I checked the ignition with a little tester: dead. These Magnetron engines were the first generation of B&S with a Capacitve Discharge coil, so blame it on the electronics. But for some thirty bucks, a new one was found on Ebay, and installed. The plug was cleaned, the oil changed, and the air filter washed and re-oiled. One good pull and…ROAR! I do love me the sound of a B&S.
Well, I love both four and two strokes, so I’m an equal opportunity small engine aficionado. And have been, ever since my first exposure to them, including my less-than-stellar attempt at taking one apart when I was a kid. I wrote that story up here. But it did run again, just not with a governor.
Given that I have two to chose from, which will it be this year? The one thing I’m not so wild about the Lawn Boy is its staggered front wheels, which is less than ideal on rough ground. I have one steep bank that does not agree with it. So maybe I’ll keep them at separate properties, and that way I won’t have to haul one there, in the cart behind my riding mower. Now that’s a story for another day.
Most of those small engines are surprisingly tough. I had one on the farm with welded up
handles and no manufacturer decals. It was an oil user and if I was in a hurry I would pourwhatever was handy in the crankcase. Hydraulic fluid, cooking oil, gear oil, the junk drained from our combines. If you could get it started it would run. We called it the mosquito killer.
I bought an old Sears Craftsman push mower used off Craigslist when I bought my house after the divorce. It was probably from the 80s. It just worked for years and years and years. I was so angry with myself when I let it run out of oil and it seized. So stupid of me.
I replaced it with a brand new Sears Craftsman and that thing was garbage. I gave it away and bought another old used Sears Craftsman mower on Craigslist. That mower died an ugly death when I hit the water-meter cover with the blade.
My current mower is the cheapest thing Lowe’s had on offer. It’s fine. But man, do I miss that first old Sears Craftsman.
Naturally enough, I bought a new Sears push mower when I bought my house (now going on 37 years ago). Even with the other expenses of a new home (I had a condo before it) the mower was a nice one, mid-line, with a blade clutch and rear bagger (they were pretty new back then). The only thing I didn’t like about the blade clutch was during oil changes, I flipped the mower over, and always got oil in the combustion chamber (guess I could have pumped out the oil from the crankcase but I never learned that trick).
One of the good things about Sears back then was they included documentation of just about any part you’d need to replace, you could get it at their service center (for a price, and of course after a number of years if it wasn’t popular it became unobtanium). The mower had a different width, not sure if it was 19″ or 20″ but it was tough to find replacement blade after Sears withdrew parts for it. After a while (it must have been 25-27 years old) it refused to start, and I didn’t have patience to mess with it, so I spent $ to make the problem go away and bought a replacement Sears mower. Wow, they REALLY cheapened them in that time…no throttle at all, flimsy height adjustment lever that rubs on the tires and no “book of part numbers” which is what drew me to Sears in the first place.
It works well enough, though I’ve had to rebuild the carburator, and fuel lines degrade with the gasoline if you leave it in too long (guess I should run it dry at end of season).
We had Montgomery Wards mowers when I was growing up, one self-propelled I used, then we moved and my Dad bought a new Sears non-self-propelled (about 1976) that predated the carburator primer bulb they started putting in them (both the Sears mowers I bought myself years later had them..on Tecumseh and other B&S). Anyhow, my Dad got frustrated with how hard it was to start, and used ether to help start…and promptly caught the mower on fire. Dad was a chemist, but I guess he overdid it…that Sears didn’t last too long till we got something easier to start.
We also had an Ahrens snowblower, 2 stage (Vermont with long driveway)…I used to wake up at 4 AM to clear the driveway…the engine was fine on it, but unless I got every ounce of moisture dried out of the 2nd stage impeller, it would refreeze and we’d bust a belt. We had a stock of spare belts and went through them in a season…sometimes let them run out and had to walk a couple miles to the hardware store to get a replacement….didn’t have AWD nor 4WD in the 70’s so vehicles couldn’t go anywhere if driveway wasn’t at least partly cleared after heavy storm. My Uncle was mad at my Father when he gave it away to a neighbor after they moved to Texas….40 years ago this July.
I bought a lawn boy for my first house in 1983 – looked very much like yours. I don’t think they changed much over the years.
I loved it. I gave it to my parents when I upgraded to a self propelled; they had it for a couple of decades until my brother, God rest his soul, used the wrong non-mixed gas to run it when he tried to cut my mother’s grass after my dad passed. It seized. Still miss that mower, and him much much more.
Holes in magnesium? Why of course since magnesium does corrode in a sense. One should see the underside of our F-4S Phantom on the Hornet. Lots of magnesium in the aircraft which requires constant care which doesn’t happen when in the boneyard.
Ah, old lawnmowers. Used my parents back in the 60s, first on a wind up riding mower. Eh, ok, but not great. Then an older one with an old BS engine that was a bear to start. A minibike in there somewhere with a BS that was only hard to start. A couple as an adult that were hard to start. Along with a Murry and something else that were hard to start. When my Dad passed I acquired a red, high end, 6 speed self propelled mower that was unspeakably hard to start. Every BS engine I had, including on a generator, was hard to start.
Then, sometime early this century I bought a Craftsman, powered by Honda, self propelled mower. The drive system seems loose, but still works, excepting when the spark plug went bad and mimicked a bad carb, it starts usually on the first pull, occasionally the second. Even with my wife. Only mower I’ve used that the governor actually worked on. Go thru light grass and it runs fine. Hit the heavy stuff and speed doesn’t really drop, but the pitch drops, you can almost hear it downshift, except signal speed, it’s the throttle opening. It’s like a new car compared to a Model T.
While I foresee less mowing in my future, word is Calif smog will outlaw gasoline mower sales next year, so some of you might want to preemptively purchase a new one, while you can. And where California goes, so goes the nation, sooner or later.
“And where Califirnia goes, so goes the nation sooner or later.”
True with 1.6/gal. flush water closets & domestic water fixture flow restricters, but that’s as far as it goes.
11/8/22 & 11/24 : Lord help all SANE Americans.
Funny you mention the thick wet grass here. It can plug up the 48″ deck and stall my 20hp Briggs on my John Deere. Think about it. Stalling a engine, with a V-belt, through a electromagnetic clutch. That my friend is some seriously damp grass. Could not even get that lit back in high school