Making More Room In The Shed

 Now that I have an automower taking care of my grass cutting chores I feel its time to get rid of my little rear engine rider. Sure I could keep it around for doing Forrest Gump impersonations while grinding up leaves but I have a bagger push mower that will work better for that chore. A big sale at work next week will be a good opportunity to try to peddle it because I need to raise some cash to pay up a bet my wife insists she won. She says our garbage can is one color and I say its another. She thinks she is right just because everyone she asks about the color agrees with her. I feel a need to pay up and just get this over with, even though in my mind I know its green, not grey...or at least the old can was green. Anyway, the problem with selling it is that it leaks engine oil worse than an old harley. I can't just pressure wash it and hope for the best because the leak reveals itself as soon as you start the engine. For the longest time I just assumed the leak was the sump gasket but today when I pulled it from the shed there was a huge puddle under it and no oil at all in the crankcase. The problem must be the lower crank seal.
 I pushed the machine from the shed to the garage where I could better work on it.

 Nothing has been fixed in this garage in a long time. I was looking forward to some quiet wrenching.

 Initially I was prepared to yank the engine and all of the associated bull that went along with that. After taking a closer look I discovered this was gonna be an easier job than I thought. I pulled the mower deck, one rear wheel and the crank pulley.

 What I found was a huge mess except where the seal was leaking, That area was washed clean from all the oil flow.

 Of all the gaskets, seals and o-rings I bought for this repair, I only used this crank seal. The old one came out too easily and the new one pressed in just about right. In a couple days I'll know if the repair was a success.

 It really was a simple job and this is all the tools I needed. Now I feel the need to get into another project. I suppose I should get back into learning how to use that airbrush and get the sporty painted. I'll keep you posted.

Later.

We're Back

 I rolled the Ultra out of the garage yesterday and rode it to work for the first time this year. For me that is the official sign that winter is over and regular warm weather activities can resume. After work I rode to my favorite mexican food joint, Grand River Oasis, for carryout. It's about a fifty mile round trip and I saw a lot of bikers on the road. I'm sure they were all thinking the same thing I was...hell ya, we're back in the saddle!

 I won't bore you with an update pic of the spray booth but I will tell you that more progress has been made and I'll fill you in later.

 In work related news, we've been busy. This is the time of year when things can get crazy and if there is a chance for a little fun well then we take it. A while back we hired a guy to help around the shop. This dude would lay on a creeper to work on a push mower rather than tip the machine on its side or put it on a bench. After he quit working here we would joke about it and even exaggerate the act just to get a rise out of the rest of the crew. Friday somebody (I know who you are) decided my freshly cleaned work area would be a good place to store floor jacks. I really don't need a floor jack to fix a chainsaw... or do I?

Later.

From Green to White

 Its been a long time since I've talked about the "other" thing I do at work. If you follow this blog you know I repair chainsaws and other handheld two cycle equipment. What I don't talk about much is that when I was first hired by my current employer, it was to run the landscape crew. It's something that I had done for a very long time. Part of those landscaping duties was to do develop and manage a lawn pesticide applications and fertilization branch of the business. The owner of the business at the time didn't give me a blank check but he did give me a loose leash. I was given the type of equipment I wanted and what we couldn't buy, I was allowed to build.

 Be careful what you wish for. I had a good reputation and some connections from past employment. That combined with fair pricing, the willingness to work with the customers schedule, and good results has built a monster that consumes way too much of my time. 

 I never really had any desire to spray lawns. It came with the job and if you're gonna do a job you might as well do it well. I also can control how these chemicals are applied. I mean, people that want weed or pest control are gonna either do it themselves or hire someone. You wouldn't believe how many people figure if a little is good then more is better. When I make the application I have control over chemical types, rates and the possibility of runoff. That's how I justify it in my head anyway.

 There are two things I really like about this kind of work. One is being outside. The weather is always good because if it's crap weather then I'm not able to perform the work. The other is the equipment. I like building or working on the pumps, sprayers and spreaders. It's a gearhead thing.

 The other day I decided to shoot a short video while running one of the rigs. Nothing fancy, just a phone in one hand and steering wheel in the other. It appears to be boring work but the truth is I've been doing it so long it comes automatically. The equipment is calibrated for a certain speed so there is no rushing the job. That relaxed pace means I am rarely thinking about actually running the equipment and most of my thought process is consumed thinking about motorcycle projects, a stubborn repair waiting on my work bench, or lately a bathroom remodel. Guess what? The pay is the same no matter what I'm day dreaming about.
 I have one big job left for Monday and then all the equipment can be cleaned and put away till spring. The trucks will lose their water tanks and get salters and snow plows installed and then we just wait for mother nature to dump the white stuff. One more year in the books.

Later.

Workshop Wednesday-EFI

 I reported a while back that Husqvarna has computerized some of their chainsaws. We can connect a laptop and check trouble codes, run tests along with viewing the running history of the machine. It is the future of small engines until something more environmentally friendly comes along.
 Your next lawn mower may be the same way. EFI small engines have been around a few years but I am first being exposed to them now as Husqvarna is using efi engines in some of their zero turn mowers.
 I do the 2 cycle engine repairs at the shop but I was volunteered to do the troubleshooting on this project. Partly because I had the time to load and learn the software and partly because I already had a laptop setup for running other shop software and partly because I like this kind of techy crap.

 The program for troubleshooting this Kohler engine seems very complete. We can monitor every part of the efi system, check codes, log data, set event triggers, access service manuals and so on. In this particular case the MIL (malfunction indicator light) was on but there were no codes stored. Turns out the system is very complete but can't diagnose every problem. For that we needed old fashioned common sense. If the computer says the engine is ok then the problem must be elsewhere. Sure enough, the MIL light had a wire pinched during assembly and was illuminating.

 In other news...the big talk in the shop yesterday was a high speed motorcycle chase. My work space is the closest to the road intersection and I could hear a loud sport bike coming down the road. As it turns out we had a guy running a back hoe in the yard and he heard the bike too. Pretty loud. The rider blew the stop sign and headed down the hiway. Pinned throttle through 6 gears for as long as I could hear him. The sound of the local cops siren finally drowned out the sweet sound of an inline four at full tilt. I have no idea how this story ends but I like that the "big news" in this small town is nothing more than some guy up to shenanigans on his bike.

Later.

Workshop Wednesday-Duplicate Sprayer

 If you follow this blog you probably know that at work I fix chainsaws and plow snow. I don't talk about it a lot but I also do lawn applications. You know, fertilizer and weed control stuff. Business has been good and we've added another spray rig to the crew. The tractors we use are Steiner. There's no particular reason for using the Steiner except we had a few and they were heavy duty enough to handle the weight of the water, tank and pumps along with being pretty reliable machines.
 These tractors push a hooded sprayer that does the blanket application but to do the trim work and reach into remote areas, I needed a hose reel sprayer. About five years ago I built one and mounted it on the back of the Steiner.

 You can see the unit on the right has the hose reel sprayer and tank on the back of it. This setup works so sweet because I can broadcast spray a large lawn in a short time and then run around and trim it out while riding the tractor. The other handy feature is the ability to place that hose reel anywhere on the property I need it to reach remote areas. I see other contractors dragging hundreds of feet of hose from a truck parked on the street. That's just lame and wastes a lot of time. If I can do the job quicker then I can be more competitively priced.
 The other fad right now in the spraying world are these small stand-on sprayers that double as fertilizer spreaders. We have one and mostly just use the spreader. I really don't like open sprayers because of the potential for drift. My clients also like the fact that we are spraying under hoods.
 Because the first hose reel sprayer has run without any break downs for five years now I decided to just duplicate it.

 The plan was to make everything interchange. If one tractor or sprayer breaks down then I can swap pieces around as needed. This pic is just showing the old sprayer on a forklift held above the new sprayer I'm building.

 And this is the finished project. Now that I look at the pic I'm reminded that I still need to tidy up some wiring. The design is such that it can be forked off the tractor and sits on its own legs. This means it could sit in a UTV or pickup truck if needed. The only real drawbacks to this setup are the potential for catching the reel on a tree branch and the high center of gravity. In five years we haven't rolled one but I must admit I did bend the crap out of the reel once.

Later.

Seal Puller

 The Rat Turd had developed another leak and although it's a rat, I won't tolerate a leaking motorcycle. In this case it was the shift shaft seal. A new seal was still available from Kawasaki, now all I had to do was remove the old seal. Larger seals are easy to remove with a screwdriver or seal puller but small seals can be a challenge.

 I decided to modify a screwdriver into a small seal puller. Oh I'm sure there's a fancy tool in the Snap-On catalog but this works on a budget.

 Just slip the tool under the seal lip and pry. Care must be taken not to scratch the sealing surface of the shaft.

  So big deal. Who gives a crap about a leaky seal? Well I'm writing this to help myself work something out. The cover that goes on this left side of the engine supports that shift shaft. You can kinda see the shiny area on the shaft in the above picture. I don't want to run with the cover. The exposed transmission without the cover looks more mechanical and appealing to me.

 Here is the unpainted exposed transmission.  I needed to make a new support for the shift shaft but didn't want to dink around measuring out and creating a fancy bracket.

 Here you see the new bushing I drilled out to fit over the shift shaft. That raised boss with threaded hole to the left is where the bushing will be supported from. So in true cheap ass greasy shop rag form, I just bolted a slug to the raised boss then laid a piece of tubing on top of those two and welded it all together. Simple and very rat-like.

 This leads me to my next project. I want to add a foot shifter to the hiway peg. I thought about a hand shifter but right now I'm thinking foot. Having recently made a header that moves all the exhaust system to the other side of the bike, I now have plenty of room for this project. I won't go into details as I don't have any idea yet how I am going to do this but I can say that I have a small collection of free lawn mower parts I want to use.

End.

Workshop Wednesday-Small Engine Fuel

 This time of year our inbound repair shelf at the shop is full of leaf blowers and chain saws that ran fine last year but now won't start. Soon it will be snow blowers. As a small engine mechanic I see more fuel related problems than anything else. There are two reasons for this. The first is ethanol. Its just not a good fuel for small engines. Most equipment more than just a few years old has rubber components that won't stand up to ethanol. Typically I see more than one piece of equipment a day that has a broken fuel line in the tank with the filter just laying there unconnected to anything. It ran a while like this and now the carb has crap in it. There is also the problem of phase separation.  Google it, but basically it comes down to the fact that ethanol absorbs moisture...to a point. Then it separates and what you are left with is a layer of water on the bottom of your tank or gas can. When you tip and pour a gas can you get the stuff from the bottom first and that could be a large dose of water. Not good. I'm not going to get into the politics of ethanol but right now its just not a good fuel for small engines.
 The second fuel related problem I see is "stale gas". The equipment was used and ran fine. Then it sat in the shed till the next year when it was needed. Even if it was ethanol free fuel, it will evaporate and leave behind a big mess most people call "varnish". This is the stuff that plugs up tiny ports and jets in carbs.

 A few years back we started selling canned fuel. This is one example. There were a lot of claims about this stuff. We were told this fuel would stay fresh in an engine for two years. Ideal if you are a casual user of certain equipment. For example you have a hedge trimmer that only gets used a few times a year. A quart of fuel may be the total volume for the whole season. This stuff would be perfect for that if it worked up to its claims.
 I'm a "show me" kind of guy. I decided I needed to conduct my own experiment.

 About 27 months ago I salvaged an engine from a piece of equipment headed for the dumpster. I drained the gas and added SEF (small engine fuel). I ran the engine till I knew all the old gasoline was worked out of the carb and it was running on just SEF. Then I shut it off. I was certain the carb now only had SEF in it. I attached the tag in the pic and dated it 7/17/12. I then pushed the engine in the corner and pretty much forgot about it. Oh sure I'd see it every so often and be tempted to try to start it but I managed to hold off.
 Yesterday I noticed the engine and decided it was time to test out the claims. It was over the two year mark so figured why not. When I opened the cap on the fuel tank I noticed the tank appeared dry. I think a lot of the fuel evaporated and couldn't help but wonder if it "varnished" in the carb. I added some more SEF, turned the ignition switch on, moved the choke lever and gave it a pull. Sure enough it fired right up! I was truly impressed that this old piece of junk started on first pull. I let it run a while and it never missed a beat. I'm sold. I'm also relieved that all that canned fuel we sold was actually doing what we claimed it would do.
 Canned fuel isn't cheap but neither are repair costs. No snake oil here, this stuff works. Husqvarna offers to double the two year warranty on certain small equipment if three cans of their 50:1 mixed fuel is purchased at the time of the new equipment purchase. That says a lot.
 So if you've ever considered using this type of fuel but weren't sure if it was any good, go ahead. It has the Greasy Shop Rag stamp of approval.

Workshop Wednesday-Dummy Hung

 Last year I was going to post this pic.

The problem is that the pic doesn't really back up the story very well. This was an oh-shit moment that was inches from ending bad for me.

 This is what the same spot looks like with the grass cut and the bank trimmed. Notice the stumps right in the middle of the pic.

 I was brush-hogging this lot. I knew the creek was there but had no idea these stumps were hidden under the tall grass. I got dummy hung on the stumps. A combination of using the differential lock, four wheel drive and some rocking back and forth only got me closer to the creek. The front wheel is actually off the ground just hanging over the creek bank. The back wheel is sliding down the bank but a stump was now holding me up and preventing a roll over.

 Ya know, sometimes when you try to do a nice complete job for someone, all you get is lemons. Then when you make lemonade it tastes like piss. Oh well, I've been stuck worse. There was that time with my truck when the river was a bit deeper than I thought. I later learned to remove the fan belt before entering water that was almost carb deep. And how come its easy to get out into a marsh but very difficult to turn around and leave?  Anyway, I decided the best thing to do was call for help. Al came to the rescue with a 4wd pickup truck. The tractor came right out. Thanks Al!

 For the record, I don't like this piece of property.  I was on this lot recently with a smaller tractor and got hung on a different stump and nearly ended up in the same situation. This time I actually had creek water on the tires. The boys at the shop would have never let me hear the end of it if I got stuck again in the same lot.

Workshop Wednesday-A New Age

 Well it seems we're getting closer to the day when the average joe won't be able to do any work on his small engine equipment. At work we sell the complete line of Husqvarna small engine equipment and lately we've been seeing a lot of hi tech offerings from the big H. One of them is the "smart switch".

 This is a keyless ignition switch/info center in one. You can enter a security code to keep the kids from accidentally starting the machine. It also tells you if the pto is engaged or if the park brake is on. These things have to be in the right position before it will start. Other features include a battery state of charge indicator, reverse safety switch and headlight switch. Hell, this machine has LED headlights.
 The Briggs engine has an auto choke so all you do is press the start button and the machine will crank up to 5 seconds attempting to start. If its really cold out you can hold the button for 3 seconds and the machine will then make a 10 second cranking attempt to start. A single press of the button shuts it down. All the pretty colors make it kinda cool. I'm a sucker for this gadgety kind of crap.

Another hi tech advance in small engines is Husqvarna's "Auto Tune".

 Now when a chainsaw comes in  we can hook it to a laptop and see all kinds of info about the saw and do some tests on things like throttle position sensor, temp sensor and such. We can see things like the serial number of the saw, total run time, highest rpm (which is over 14,000 on some of these saws) and carb temperature. We can see warmest start attempts, coldest start attempts and total starts. We also get to see a bar graph of how much time is spent at different rpm levels. There is another set of numbers on there that represent fuel quality. Don't lie to me and tell me you're running premium gas when the computer is telling me you have crap gas in there.
 Auto tune seems to work pretty well. It adjusts the fuel  mixture by attempting to lean out the mix, then reading rpm and adjusting the mix accordingly. This process happens continually. There are no hi or lo speed screws to mess with. Not even an idle adjust screw. Beam me up Scotty.
 We've got a big log out back. When a customers first tries one of these saws the reaction has always been positive.

 Now if they would only come up with a way for me to find my misplaced tools. Is there an app for that?

Workshop Wednesday-Propane Mowers

 I've been involved with lawn mowing and landscaping all my life. My first job out of high school was working for a local contractor fixing lawn mowers. Eventually I ended up on a crew, and then running a crew. He sold the business and I trained the new owners to cut grass. Ya I know its just cutting grass but like anything else you need to be efficient if you want to make money. They sold to someone else that I had to train and when they had enough and wanted to sell, I got out. That was eleven years or so and I wasn't interested in training another owner. Its kinda awkward actually. The next guy I went to work for was starting a new landscaping business and was looking for someone to handle the cutting, fertilizing and spraying. I ended up with enough accounts to create two cutting crews and a spraying crew. That ran for 17 years. I did a year for another contractor and now three years for my current employer.
 My point is, I'm no stranger to lawn and landscape equipment.

Husqvarna ztr on propane. This is a similar setup to what we run today. No, I don't wear a riding jacket when I mow grass. I rode the bike to the event. I can't believe I had to clear that up :-)

 One day many years ago, a local LP gas company was sponsoring a field day to show the benefits of running propane in a lawn mower. Obviously they were doing it to sell LP, but it was also an excellent chance to demo the latest equipment from most major manufacturers.
 When I decided to try out the Dixie Chopper zero turn mower I ran into a little problem. The mower deck raises and lowers with a single foot pedal. I couldn't get the deck to lower. Even though I wasn't familiar with this machine it was obvious to me the damn thing was broke.
 I continued to fight with the pedal but couldn't get anything to happen. The DC rep came over and started trying to explain to me how it worked. I showed him I was doing it like he said but it was broken or jammed.
 I should paint the picture a little better. Here we have reps from many major manufacturers who all claim their machines are better than the competition. These machines are lined up side by side in front of a field of long grass. They all wanted to prove their product was better than the next. The Dixie Chopper guys were bragging how fast their machines can go. They may even hold some kind of record, I don't know or care because it has nothing to do with real world lawn maintenance. Most people don't want to see you hauling ass across their yard. These Dixie Chopper guys showed up in the biggest, shiniest truck and thought their crap didn't stink so when I made the claim that their precious machine was broken, they started freaking out. "just do it like this" "do that" "you're not doing it right". By now they had three reps belittling me. One guy explained to me that I wasn't mechanically inclined enough to figure it out.
 I calmly explained to him that I fix lawn mowers for a living, run a crew and build some of my own equipment. I work with equipment every day. If you guys designed it in such a way that I can't figure it out then Joe Homeowner will never figure it out.
 That pissed him off and I was asked to dismount the machine. When this gentleman who claimed to have designed the deck lift couldn't make it work either I heard a few laughs from the competition. I stood there long enough to give them the opportunity to apologize but that never happened.
 They were still dickin around with it a half hour later.

 Dixie Chopper may or may not be a good machine...I don't know because I never got to take that test mow. I'll never know because after those three reps treated me like shit I decided they weren't an option, ever.