Rick's b.log - entry 2020/08/02

Harvest

The Gage:

And the Sloe, apparently good for popping into a bottle of gin for a few years:

I don't use either, so a friend is coming over on Monday to harvest whatever is desired.

Sentient bramble

Turns out that a young (green) piece of bramble had sacrified itself up into the carburettor mechanism in such a way (and this wasn''t exactly easy to do, or undo) that it would be holding the choke so the mower would start, but the choke wouldn't release upon starting, so the mower would not be able to get up to speed. There's no throttle, it's an automatic thing that runs at a fixed speed. Only, it wasn't ever reaching that and stalling instead.

How did the bramble get there? How did it know to aim for exactly that part in order to disable the big noisy monster that was slaughtering it?

Well, folks, this is 2020.

So the idea of sentient bramble would get, at best, a nonchalant shrug.

Less bramble, more barrenness

I ought to do more today, but my back and shoulders hurt so...

Marte revised

I ordered a main drive belt. I hope it is correct, and I hope I never need to find out. ☺ I already have a spare mower blades belt, I thought to order two after the awful mess that I got off Amazon.
I can find very little information on this mower, however it appears as if the basic frame/mechanism is used by a number of manufacturers, and that they tend to take the same belts. So, well, this was purely an educated guess...

I ordered a new air filter, as the original (yes, it was branded so is probably as old as the mower) was not only oily but rusted and clogged with all sorts of everything.

I ordered a new spark plug. Knowing nothing about spark plugs, and confronted with a number of brands, I chose Champion purely because that's the surname of one of my friends.
A spark plug is a remarkable object, as it routinely deals with tens of thousands of volts, hundreds of degrees of heat, insane pressure fluctuations (from near vacuum to anything from 200-1000psi), and violent vibrations, and it does this effortlessly thousands of times per second; all while asking for the spark gap to be calibrated to an accuracy of tenths of a millimetre.
However, like the air filter, this was probably there since the beginning too so a change is long overdue.
Given that the engine seems to run rich given it's fuel consumption, and that it probably uses a totally different sort of petrol today to back when it was new (I run it on 98 octane in order to have less ethanol in it), the original spark plug seems in pretty good shape, so hopefully this machine will give me a few years yet. Actually, I suspect other mechanical parts will fail before the engine does.

Finally, they gave me a good offer on a spark plug maintenance kit. There's a little scraper not unlike a nail file, a soft wire brush, and a set of feeler gauges. Now those are like insurance policies - the sort of thing that you'll practically never use, but you'll be glad you have them when you need them.
For those who don't know, they are slivers of metal in various widths from about 0.3mm to 1mm. They are intended to be slid into the spark gap of a sparkplug (between the centre pole and the bit that hangs over it) to regulate the size of the gap. If the gap is too large, it requires a higher voltage for the spark to jump the gap. It is possible that the electricity will find an easier path elsewhere, or that the built up charge simply isn't enough to cause a spark, leading to an engine that runs erratically or not at all. If the gap is too small, the spark will take less charge, so it'll be weak and likely occur earlier, leading to an engine that runs poorly or misfires.

The final thing, bought from a supermarket, was oil. The Tecumseh book recommends SAE30, which doesn't seem to exist around here (maybe it's an American rating?). I got some oil specially intended for mower engines, technically SAE15W40. All of the oils around here are something-W-something.
Anyway, I imagine it's been a while since the oil was changed, so that was also to be done.

I started with the oil change. It was refreshing to see an engine that not only had an accessible oil drain, but a simple bayonet arrangement for opening the drain. It wasn't any "take this near-inaccessible bolt out nonsense".

The next job was the air filter. Compare old and new:

The final job was to swap spark plugs. The engine manual suggests that the gap for this plug should be 0.30 inches. There's no direct metric equivalent, so I picked 0.70mm and set it to that.

All of that done, it still took blood sacrifices to the old gods in order for the engine to start. However once it had started, it purred happily at idle speed. I didn't run the engine hard, just let it idle for a while, and then drove it back (still on idle) to park it in the cow barn.

I'll leave you with a final photo, to explain why I make derogatory comments about neighbour farmer... because he irrigates his corn in rotation, and the other day did the part alongside the access lane and irrigated the hay bales. Duh.

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Gavin Wraith, 2nd August 2020, 14:42

Wire brush, feeler gauges, they take me back to the 1960s, to manual chokes and copper-headed hammers for knocking off the spinners that held the wheels on their shafts. I had a Lotus Elan, whose Weber carburettors needed constant adjustment. It was an amazing car, put together with heterogeneous parts from here and there, in days long before manufacturers carefully designed in the impossibility of anybody but themselves earning money on repairs or doing anything for themselves.

David Pilling, 5th August 2020, 01:29

I ended up buying feeler gauges for my 3D printer. Sloes - Plum jam. Google says sloe and blackberry - pity about all those brambles 8-)

John, 9th August 2020, 19:56

I couldn't find the quote, but I fear you have got the "not on Sundays idea from us!  In a rural community with neighbours it is inconsiderate to make unnecessary noise on the day of rest. But where Rick is he could have a firework display including AirBomb Repeaters without bothering anyone but the pigs in the porcherie!  I think he's being over-cautious myself!

Rick, 9th August 2020, 20:21

The "not on Sundays" thing is, generally speaking, the law.  https://droit-finances.commentcamarche.com/faq/26280-horaire s-de-travaux-les-regles-de-voisinage    Of course, the farmers and their crow scarer cannons often make a mockery of this...

Rick, 9th August 2020, 20:22

David - I'm not lacking brambles. Taking this lot out hasn't even decimated (used properly!) the bramble population chez moi.

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