Hello! Simon here with another Too Many Projects and today I am basking in a down jacket in the
British winter and we're going to have a look at a bit of basic maintenance on the on the Suffolk
here. So there's three issues that need dealing with. But today i'm just gonna kind of see how
much a bit of basic maintenance is gonna help with those. First of all it's a pig to start.
And i've been really having to fiddle with the choke and the throttle to try and get it
started each time and i think a little bit of adjustment might help with that. Second of all
the clutch kind of goes off at random on its own sometimes and that needs adjustment,
so that's okay sometimes it just flies off when you're not looking. And thirdly um there was a bit
of copper pipe hiding in the lawn last year. The lawn mower gave a pretty good effort to try and
mow that piece of copper pipe. So we're going to have a little look at that, something's a
little bit bent and might need bending back. Today I'm going to focus on fuel delivery
(if you're feeling observant you might notice the fuel tank's missing). We're going to clean up the
carb and intake and then check on the points and the spark plug and change the oil i think as well.
Just a sort of basic service and i think that'll really help at least with the starting. And
if we're feeling like we've got some more time today I might have a look at the clutch as well
So over the winter the fuel pipe went really hard. I have a tendency to buy cheap crap fuel
pipe off eBay. I don't recommend it and so I've gone out and I've purchased a proper piece of
fuel pipe and a new tap as well. Because the tap died over the winter and leaked all the
petrol out all over the shed. But first of all I picked up the manual off the internet
and printed it out and i'm going to set all the carburettor settings back as they should be from
the factory because i had a bit of a fiddle with them and it didn't necessarily make it run better.
So this is the Zenith carb which is pretty boring and pretty standard on
these mowers. But I've got the manual here...which is good...and it tells me
I have an air regulation screw here and...a main jet adjustment here. The air regulator screw
is three quarters to one full turn open. So I'm going to screw that until it seats and I'm going
quarter...half...so it's going to be somewhere in between that three quarters and one turn i'm going
to go right in the middle of those two. The main adjustment one and a half turns open so I'm going
to close that all the way. That top screw was way off where it was supposed to be from the factory.
That's seated and I'm going half a turn...one turn...one and a half turns. That felt like it
was a bit more...I'll probably have to review the video but that didn't feel so far off.
Now i'm going to just pull off the air filter and make sure that's nice and clean.
I did do this not so long ago and I
improvised with a bit of a scouring pad as an air filter which is...well let's have a
look. A bit of grass and crap on the outside but nothing to worry about there we'll just
give it a wipe. And while i got the air filter off i'll just throw some carb cleaner up there.
I have had the carb apart last year, just to make sure everything was...nothing was
binding in there and there was no problems and there wasn't
anything going on. It's nice and clean so I'm not going to bother doing that again just now.
So next let's have a look at delivering fuel to that
carburettor. All the parts for this mower are super cheap and pretty available. The tap did come
with some fuel hose but I didn't know it was going to come with that so I actually bought some pretty
nice quality stuff from a company called Hosemaster. You know having had to replace this
fuel has a couple of times I might have gone over engineered here but I got some stainless clamps as
well. Because the friction should hold these hoses on, but when I took the old one off it sprayed
fuel all over my shoes so I got pretty pissed off and decided that I should try a bit harder.
All right it's good and tight.
Pop that back up there.
So my temptation is to want to clamp this down the handle, but that actually ends up
with a bit of a rise for the petrol at the bottom here. So i want it to be falling all the time.
Slide that end onto the carb, there we go.
That's a much better quality job and I like this new tap. It's not one of the older ones
where it's push-pull, it's got a nice big 'off' logo so i can remember which way is
on and which way is off a bit more easily. So this cover here is the flywheel cover and
underneath it are the points. Which will likely need cleaning and adjusting.
Maybe that's not the flywheel cover/ I think the whole red bit
is the flywheel cover and that needs to come off.
Where are these points then?
Silver bit off.
Can i get something behind it...yes.
Plastic clip in thing. Now as i rotate that...
...I'll find some points.
OK so there are our points. You can see they move as the engine rotates. I'm going to adjust them
using this imperial feeler gauge I found. I 'm going to check for a distance of 0.018 - 0.020".
I'll let you look at people who have better access to their engines to teach you how to
do points on YouTube. There's some good ones out there, but that's where they are on this anyway.
Alright with those points set, I'm going to slide the red thing back on first because I've got a
feeling that for your reference, the viewers out there, I didn't need to take it off. I am correct.
It wasn't required to take the lid off here, the red bit, the cowl. And i have only lost
one of the nuts in the last few minutes which is a success rate of nearly 70%. You can't
argue with the stats, that's very good. Oh look a washer. I have purchased a new spark plug. I don't
usually do this on modern plugs, but I'm going to check the spark plug gap as well while I'm here.
0.020 - 0.025". That's pretty tight, it does fit though.
Just going to re-gap that plug...a bit harder than that.
There we go.
I'll just do that up to exactly the right...
...tension which is: not very tight.
So. Is the clutch in this side? I should check the manual really. Oh that's a nasty old belt.
How do these work then So this is my clutch adjustment, it is fully adjusted.
When I pull it it's going to raise this tensioner, tightening up the belt enough to
make the back pulley spin. So why does it sometimes launch forward without the clutch
being pulled? It's clearly right off to right on...right off...right on...right off...right on.
OK, so what I can tell from reading the manual and looking at it, is a new belt is definitely needed.
It was kind of adjusted anyway so I've just loosened it off a bit more. Which i don't think
is going to make the slightest bit of difference to be honest. And we're just going to start it
on the ground where it won't so easily run off. I think that's the safest thing to do
Alright a bit of fuel.
Test the fuel tap.
I like using clear fuel hose because it means you can see when fuel's going down it.
A little bit of fuel. Now i've never read the instructions for starting a lawn mower before.
It's been quite interesting. So it says you're actually supposed to use the tickler until it
overflows, then it says you're supposed to set the choke to half (45 degrees)...
...then it just says open the throttle. And that's always been something
every question for me, I've always thought maybe i'm not opening throttle to the right
place for starting and that's why it's such an awful thing to start. Then it should just
take one to two pulls to start! So i'll just do one gentle one to get everything moving okay.
No sign of life yet.
Nothing.
This would be a much more fun job if it had a starter motor.
OK let's have a rethink.
So I have double checked the points, I've moved them a little bit closer together.
I think when I tightened up the lock screw they might have moved apart
a little bit and the gap might not have been perfect. I've cleaned them a little bit more and
fiddled with the spark plug. There's definitely fuel getting into the cylinder,
so i'm pretty sure we weren't getting spark. Maybe those points have helped. I've also
learned that you have to really twist the fuel tap all the way. But let's have another go.
Oh that's better!
Nearly.
Alright that's a reasonable idle.
So i'm just going to leave that to warm up before we drain the old oil out.
I'm gonna put a heavy brake disc on it in case that clutch engages.
This is what i'm up against look now it's warming up it's just...
...the clutch is just slipping. I think new belts might help.
I'm going to turn it off, chuck it up on a box, and we'll drain the oil now I think.
Alright so this is the drain plug here and tilting the lawnmower is going to help it come out.
So i think I'm going to
probably get a bunch of oil everywhere here but we will have a go. There we go.
Yep totally, totally missed.
Hopeless. Hopeless! Luckily there's not much oil in it half a pint...284ml.
Something like that. I'm not too precious about oily paving stones luckily.
So this is our dipstick and oil fill
bit thingy. It takes 20w50 which is actually specified on the front there.
I haven't got a 20w50 on hand but i have got
a 10w40 on hand and so my plan is to change the oil once now with this slightly thin oil.
Run it on that for only a very short time, hopefully get it to clean out a bit in the
engine and then change it all quite quickly again. Because I don't know how long it's been since this
was last changed. But i would imagine it's a very long time indeed. Okay dipstick says...
Half full. Same again. B******ks. This black plate here is a deflector plate which
is meant to direct the grass into the hopper. So I'm going to adjust that a bit as well.
In fact I'm going to do that now because i'm so bored of waiting with this oil.
Look at that no wasted time here. Let's have a look...yes! Just above the minimum mark. Alright
so the mower works like this: There's two clutches in here essentially. There's a centrifugal clutch
under here, which when the motor spins up enough engages the whole drivetrain down the left-hand
side of the mower here. Which turns on your cutter over here. Then the cutter is linked to the
roller at the back, which propels it along with that belt we've had a look at over there.
And so the problem we saw on the film a minute ago was with this clutch
engaging this cutting cylinder too early. I'm gonna see...now that the engine works a bit nicer,
and the points are all clean, and it's got a new spark plug, it's got some decent fuel
delivery...whether we can actually just reduce the idle a little bit. Which will mean that there is a
lower rpm on the engine when the throttle's closed This clutch might need adjustment though and I've
never had to look at one of those before. So the next thing I'm going to do is to take that off.
I've sort of had a look and I can't see any way to get this
out of here to adjust the springs on the clutch without taking the engine off. So
that's not a job for today. I'm just gonna have to hold on to it for the time being and
make sure it doesn't run off without me. But I have noticed that that line there should be
fully inside the clutch drum This whole clutch has moved. Oh that's not tight.
That's meant to be tight innit. I didn't undo that. Let's do that up instead.
Well maybe it was just in the wrong place and that solved it. Let's get that cover back on though. I
think what i'm going to do now is start it up and give the lawn mow see how it goes.
Alright I don't think I've made much difference....
...by fixing the centrifugal clutch. But it's still quite cold,
and it's idling a bit lower than it was before.
So maybe that's fine. Maybe just the idle wasn't
right. It's getting hard to see now because it's getting dark. But I went
to line up the shot for the mow, and the mower won't move. When I throttle up...
...it just will not engage with that centrifugal clutch. But i can kind
of hear the engines struggling, like it's got resistance. And I wonder whether there's just
something that's...that's just binding it there. But I'm afraid that's it for today!
The engine's sounding good though, so that's step one done. Thanks for watching! Like and subscribe!
And hopefully more success on the next lawnmower video. :(