I have a power lawn mower with a two piece handle, but it had regular bolts connecting the top to the bottom.
I put in the special lawnmower bolts with wingnuts, but the hole is round, and the bolts are carriage bolts** and should have square holes.
Any easy way to make the round holes square? Or not easy way?
**with the head curving around the tubing so it looks nice.Remove NOPSAM to email me. Please let me know if you have posted also.
You could use a small file or better yet a Dremel type tool with a 1/8" carbide tip. You need to be familiar with the technique in using this tool though. Alternatively, you don't need to use carriage bolts. You could use bolts without the square head and the wing nut would lock up just as well.
Dude. It's a lawn mower. If the looks bother you, use longer bolts and run the head through rubber standoffs. The 'odd stuff' rack at the borg hardware aisle should have them, or the muffler hanger rack at the auto parts place. Or just get machine-head bolts instead of carriage bolts. If you are doing this to make a straight handle into a folding one, make sure the bicycle cables that go up to the deadman switch and throttle, etc, don't fall off or get kinked when you fold the handle.
aem sends...
Thanks. That's the reason. I"m trying to save space for the winter. But I am sort of compulsive about things like this. My girlfriend will tell you I'm a slob much of the time, but on mechanical stuff I want things just right.
And thanks Al. The bolts with the rounded heads, like a droopy mushroom, have the square shank, I'm going to try that Dremel thing, as well as Amei's suggestion. If I don't do well this time, I'll have practice for next time.
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Cut just a little short with the dremel, and finish up with a file.
Be careful with this. Vibration could make the bolts come loose, then the mower runs over it and turns it into a missle. Consider using the type of nuts that have a plastic insert that are tight and don't wok loose. But then, that defeats the reason for the wing nuts. I have the type of handle you described and have never folded it up.
"mm" wrote
On some of these mowers you can just fold the handle over the top of the mower, rather than breaking the handle in half.
Thanks all.
This was actually one phrase, special-lawnmower-bolts-with-wingnuts.
Lowes or HD sells the bolts by themselves** and one or two stores sells a bubble pack with a set of two and two big wingnuts, 4 inches across, designed for lawnmowers. What's especially good about them is that the top of the head is like a droopy mushroom. They wrap around the metal tube that is the handle. Look nice.
But the only way they come is as carriage bolts.
For 5 or 10 years I went either without a lawn mower or with one that was very hard to start. The last 15 months I got 5 nice lawn mowers for free, all of them broken. Two work and next spring I'll fix some more of them. So I have 4 folded up, and stacked two mowers high, with a piece of T1-11 making a shelve underneath them, plus some plastic covers over everything, and some other protection.
The fifth one I still need to chop up the leaves, but in a few days, I'll fold it up and stuff it into a corner, under some waterproof cover. (Putting them in the basement is not possible.)
Thanks a lot to all of you.
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"mm"> wrote
Lucky duckbutter. Down here in southwest florida we never get to put our mowers away.
Stop watering the grass and you won't need it for 5 months ;-)
Mine are off. The Cape just hired 15 new jackbooted thugs to run around in the middle of the night giving tickets to people that have their sprinklers running on the wrong day.
On 11/22/2005 10:09 PM US(ET), mm took fingers to keyboard, and typed the following:
The carriage bolt and square hole is to keep the bolt from turning while you undo the wingnut with your fingers. If you use a regular hex head bolt, you'll probably have to use a wrench to hold the hex nut while you undo the wingnut. If you are going to use one wrench, you might as well keep the present arrangement and use two wrenches.
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