Just giving one of our lawnmowers a quick going over prior to putting it up for sale. Mountfield HP470 which is at the budget end of the range (and I suspect has little to do with the original Mountfield mowers which were pretty up market).
Now when I got it I noted (budget not including throttle cable) that there was no 'tortoise -> hare' sticker on the throttle (govenor) lever by the carb and someone seemed to have bent it out of shape. Mower manual seemed next to useless - very content free apart from the endless safety warnings. I may well have the engine manual (Briggs&Stratton) - must look for it.
"Oh, bugger" I thought but couldn't be arsed to take it back so just gently bent the metal back to what looked like the original shape. A bit of experimenting and I worked out which was fast and which was slow and the mower worked fine.
Now trying it out today - as the mower has been in the shed for a couple of years I had forgotten which was was slow and which way was fast. After a couple of pulls and no starting I thought I would try and find out instead of just experimenting.
After a fairly tortuous search in which the Briggs&Stratton website was not much help, I found an online manual and searched through it looking for the lever settings. Found a 'tortoise -> hare' diagram, but then noted a few words in small print in one corner of the page.
"On some models the lever is bent into position and is not adjustable".
So it was as designed when I first got it, the governor was preset and there is no choke position. You just flood the carb to get the thing to start.
However you would think that there would be a prominent note somewhere telling you that the governor was preset a d hopefully a sticky label by the lever - I wrongly assumed that there was information missing from the manual, which just said pump the priming bulb 5 times then pull the cord.
Fine for someone who has never owned a mower before, but this is the first time I have seen a mower with the governor preset by bending over the lever!
Ah, well
Dave R
X-post to DIY and Gardening because it seems in scope for both.