Lawn Mower repair books?

[montana wildhack]

I've been able to fix three lawn mowers so far this summer, but I really don't know anything about them. All the fixes I did were obvious and easy. I didn't have to know what the parts that needed to be replaced were called.

I held a carburetor in my hand for the first time today. I'm almost

1. As it turned out, a friend who teaches shop in North Carolina called to say hello just at the right time. He suggested I take Junior High shop, but he asked me some questions and helped me discover why the reservoir was leaking. I'm still not finished with the mower I'm working on (as in, I don't think I put everything pack together properly) but it doesn't leak anymore...

Are there any good books for someone who is kind of clueless? And manual free? I need to have a better grasp on how everything works.

[jacko]

Look here.

[franz fripplfrappl]

Engine manufacturers usually offer books for their engines. I found mine at a local small engine repair shop.

[Bob F]

[HeyBub]

Don't feel bad.

I once saw a cartoon showing a cardiologist the carburetor from his BMW with the caption: "There are many things about the carburetor we still don't understand."

[montana wildhack]

;-)

I don't feel bad. I don't expect to be rebuilding carburetors, but it seemed like I could if necessary.

I had no idea I could fix these things, so I'm happy that I'm making some sort of effort to take the mystery out of it. I appreciate repair people and their knowledge and talent, but I also don't want to get help unless I really need it.

[montana wildhack]

Thanks. We have 4 broken snow bLowers in our garage and I want to reduce that number. I am responsible for "breaking" two of of them because I didn't know how to use them. They're going to need new belts. If I fix them, I probably won't ruin the belts again.

[montana wildhack]

I can't find the model number of this mower which makes life difficult. I don't think all Japanese built Toros are the same...

[montana wildhack]

Bookmarked. Thanks. I guess a magneto isn't some sort of hypnotist. I see a couple of chapters with my name written on them.

[hrhofmann]

Sam Goldwasser is a great guy, I don't know how he was able to put all this information together, but he has answers to just about everything relating to home electrical/electronics, plus a lot of other stuff I have never even had a chance to look at.

Bob Hofmann

[Bill]

Most products which can be serviced have "service manuals" available from the manufacturer. In the case of a lawnmower, you would get a service manual from the engine manufacturer.

The factory service manuals for anything will give specific service information for that specific product and tell you exactly what to do, whereas "generic" service manuals try to cover many different products and can be frustrating to use.

The best example of this is for a car. Get a factory service manual from the dealer parts department (which would be for one specific model) and compare that with the generic service manuals at auto parts stores.

My car factory service manual tells me exactly how to remove the inside door handles (use a rag to un-clip holding ring), how to remove the dash, computer error codes, etc. It is twice as many pages as the generic (which covers all models for several years) and it only covers my car!

[montana wildhack]

We have been unable to determine the model number of one mower, so that's an issue.

My question, however, had more to do with wanting general information and the specific manuals, while extremely handy for ordering parts (and I mean both putting them back in place in order and replacing them with new parts), doesn't tell me how to diagnose problems or do tune-ups.

I'm new to this stuff, so I need to start with something like, "Get to Know Your Friend the Internal Combustion Engine" and "What Makes Your Self-Propelled Mower Move."