Mower Matters

[Tim Streater]

I've been taking the ride-on mower out the last few days, in between rain, as the grass had got quite long. So I did it in two parts as when the grass is long it takes about twice as long. The mower is a Mountfield 827H (a cheap ride-on - for some value of cheap).

Twice now, I've managed to run it into a brick wall (slowly), and then been too slow to back off. The result of this is that the steering rod which angles the front wheels when I turn the steering wheel, has got bent and the two front wheels then point in different directions.

The first time this happened (last year), the mower man came out and removed the rod and was able to straighten it by cuffing it soundly with a hammer on a bit of wood. This time he's suggesting I remove it and take it in (I think this is because he assumes I need an urgent repair and he's usually quite busy). But in fact today when I had to give up on that mower, I just dug out the old petrol push-mower and finished the job with that. So I'm going to decline his suggestion - my DIY skills are quite low-grade anyway, and I'm really past the bending down and other bollocks required for this sort of job.

The question is though, why is the steering link rod so easily damaged? And can anything be done to strengthen it?

[nothanks]

Strengthen it - not really. The answer seems to be to improve the driving skills (meant humorously*). My ride-on has adjustable track rod ends so that the tracking can be adjusted (like a car) - are you sure that yours doesn't?

In full disclosure - when I was rushing some time last year I managed to catch a solid bit of hedge with a wheel and irretrievably bend the front axle while cutting the grass at full speed. Fitting the replacement was a bit of a bu&&er (why do Countax mowers seem like they didn't build and de-bug a prototype before going into production?) and I'm more cautious now ... at least I will be if the ground is ever dry enough to mow!

[Sam Plusnet]

It's probably deliberate. Running into things will cause damage, and fixing that link rod isn't too big a job since you can thump it with a hammer and straighten it.

If you beef up that rod, the impact is transmitted to some other part of the mower which will cost several arms and legs to replace.

[Tim Streater]

Makes sense I suppose.

[John Rumm]

IME working on ride on mowers is generally a PITA (or more likely knees and back etc) as there is no easy way to get under them. Last year I bought a mower "lift" contraption[1]. (it does not so much lift "up", as lifts on one side so that it is tilted over. Makes it much easier to get at things and work on them from the side rather than laying on your back with the end up on ramps or similar)

[1] similar to: Works ok, but don't follow the assembly instructions!

Probably because it is dangling down there near the ground where it can meet the steering arms on the wheels.

It only needs be as strong as the ball joints on the end of the rods! Probably better the rod bends than something more serious breaks.

[Tim Streater]

Does repeated bending do anything (either for good or not)?

[John Rumm]

If you do it often enough, and badly enough, it would eventually fracture...

(getting the bent bit red hot with a blowtorch while straightening would probably lessen the fatigue on the metal - but I can see it mattering much unless you find yourself needing to straighten it every week!)

[alan_m]

It's called metal fatigue. However if it's just a small bend that you are straightening on a very occasional basis, such as once a year, the part will possibly outlive the rest of the mower (or you).

[alan_m]

Which part is bent? There is an exploded view of the steering parts at

[Tim Streater]

Near as I can tell, #17. The mower man did say that removing it requires taking out a couple of split pins.

[Tim Lamb]

Can you use a car jack to get enough height for access? Once off, you could hammer or lever it straight. Bench vice? Neighbour?

>

[Tim Streater]

Phfft! Too old for that sort of caper. No vice or bench and I'm too impatient so doing myself harm would not be off the cards.

[Harry Bloomfield Esq]

Between two of us, we just tip it on it's side to work on the underside. I make sure I tip it so the carb ends up upper most, otherwise the sump oil gets into the intake. It's lighter to tip, if the cutting deck is dropped off first.

[John Rumm]

I have manually tipped it in the past - but find if you go too far (even with carb on top) then it dribbles petrol out of the bleeder hole on the fuel cap :-)

[Tim Streater]

And Sod's Law dictates that just before I had to give up on my machine (now booked in and Chummy will come here to fix it), I'd just filled it right up with petrol, too.

[NY]

My Husquvarna R 214T mower has an incredibly tight turning circle. The back end, with the engine and the driving wheels, steers against the front end that has the seat and the three overlapping "hover mower" (as opposed to cylinder mower) blades.

When I was testing it before I bought it, the salesman said "drive it round the car park" so I found a small drain cover about 18" diameter and was able to steer round it so the inside wheels kept a constant distance. In the garden, I can go round saplings that are in holes which are about 2 feet in the lawn.

The main problem with it at the moment is its weight. I wouldn't trust it on the lawn, for fear of it making huge ruts in the soft ground. I've just cut the edges of the lawn where it's grown longest - using the walk-behind mower. And that's only the sections that weren't waterlogged until last week - I won't even risk walking on those.

Our lawn has a large pond with wooden stakes around the edge to form a bank, and the ground undulates and slopes towards the pond. I am very careful how close I go to the edge (even when the land is dry) and I tend to drive towards the pond (taking car not to overshoot!) rather than driving with one side closer to the pond than the other. There is also a stream at the bottom of the garden and I keep about 1 foot from where the ground changes from level to a slope down to the stream, and do the slope with a walk-behind mower.

I've only got the mower stuck once and that was on the slope near the pond when the driving wheels were higher than the front wheels and couldn't get enough grip to pull me back up. I had to lift the back end and swing it round through 90 degrees so the wheels were on a more gradual slope and could pull the mower clear. The mower weighs 200 kg, of which I imagine the majority is over the engine, so I did well to lift it it clear of the ground so my wife could shove it sideways - rinse and repeat until it was in the right direction.

[Clive Page]

Why don't you take the advice of our former leader, Boris Johnson, and try a robot mower?

you may have to disable Javascript to get around the paywall).

That's not a serious suggestion, of course, but it is a mildly amusing article. If only he'd stuck to writing mildly humorous stuff for the papers and never dabbled in politics, we'd all be so much better off.

[nothanks]

A quick ctrl-A and ctrl-c is an alternative way of dodging the pay wall, then a ctrl-v into something like Word to read what has been "stolen" ;-)

[Tim Streater]

CTRL-A, CTRL-C, CTRL-V in fact CTRL-ANYTHING do nothing here.

[Paul]

OK, looking at a Mac keyboard in the junk room, lower left corner:

control option <splat>

Whereas a windows keyboard has

crtl WinDers Alt space-bar

On a Mac, it could be splat-a, splat-c, splat-v might be the sequence needed. Which roughly translated would be "Select all", "Copy", "Paste".

From the Mac menu bar, you might see shortcuts defined in an Edit Menu, declaring these keyboard values.

While this is not a Mac Edit menu, you can see the love of <splat> in the menu example here. Splat is commonly used as a modifier. Or Shift-Splat.

Paul