Rick's b.log - entry 2025/03/09

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Marte laid to rest

I may, maybe, have a fiddle with the engine. It's certainly not a priority but, you know, maybe some day...
Until then, she can watch the sun set. Well, maybe not today.

This old rustbucket was the machine that changed how things happen around here. I can't imagine going back to using a little walky-mower to deal with the grass.

My new mower

Now there's a story here. The mower was listed as €1,799. I procrastinated for ages because that was expensive, even though I picked the cheapest one that looked like it would be capable of dealing with this place. A nearby supermarket has one that's about a thousand, but it's basically a go-kart with a spinning blade, I don't think the wheels would be large enough to handle the ground.

Marte gave me two more cuts, so I could put off getting a replacement, but as I mentioned at the end of the final turn there was oil leaking out. Time, then, and with it being the end of winter it wasn't going to wait.

So I went into the local DIY place and... since they had come up with some new models the one I was interested in was a hundred euros cheaper. But not only that, for that week only they were having a promotion where I can get a reduction of 15% on the item of my choice. The woman said she didn't even need to ask as she knocked off about two hundred and twenty euros from the price.

So the mower that would have cost me just a smidgen under €1,800 ended up costing about €1,480 including oil and a weird sort of petrol to get it going the first time.

The story doesn't end there. Not getting consistent advice about what fuel to use (the first guy didn't seem to know what E10 was!), I went back into the shop to get a special fuel preparation that is 95 octane with various treatments that cost a horrific €29 for five litres. I knew that would work because the mower recommended it. If it was decent weather on delivery day (Saturday), I wanted to get started on mowing and not have to go back into town to get some fuel.
When I came to purchase it, the woman was like "so you'll be paying with points?". Yup, my big purchase gave me something like €35 of points, so the horribly expensive petrol was...free.

This machine is a rather different technology compared to Marte. For a start, the engine fires up very easily. It's quite a small engine, quieter than Marte, but was more than capable of taking me up the incline coming out of the far side of the potager. I didn't have to worry about risking stalling because of the blades hitting the ground because this mower has the deck balanced. Which is why the grass, when cut, was a fairly uniform cut rather than the streaky that Marte made.

I found the gears were a little odd, but it seems that one should only push the pedal partway for engaging the clutch, and all the way for the brake. This is the other way around to Marte. I found that out this afternoon reading the booklet.

Every so often the engine would hiccup and a big cloud of white smoke would come out. As it turns out, the guy when setting up the mower for me, poured in too much oil. I'm going to have to stop at the chemist and buy a big syringe and a transfusion kit (for the plastic pipe) and see if I can draw out some of the oil. The alternative is a complete drain and refill, but that's a bit of a pain.
Unfortunately I didn't get any sort of booklet about the engine so I don't know how much oil it actually needs or what it runs on. The person who delivered it said SP95-E10 or SP98 were both okay. I use SP98 here even though my stuff can work on 95 octane petrol, because the E10 part of it is more corrosive and my fuel is old. This is a new engine so will be made to cope with it. Anyway, running it on 98 octane means I can just get the same fuel for everything.

A more pressing problem was that the grass outflow kept on blocking up. The grass was damp, but it's nothing that Marte couldn't cope with. I think it was a combination of there being a metal bar along the bottom of the outflow, and the plastic hood bending down quite low.
So I did an "engineers fix".

Unfortunately the blades are enthusiastically powerful so grass clippings flew out everywhere, and that's a problem when the wind carries them back onto you! I think I'll have to see if I can either rig it up a little lower, or maybe just undo the spring that keeps it closed so it can wobble and hopefully dislodge anything before it gets too clogged.

The next problem is that the mower instantly dies when I put it in reverse.
This is by intention, believe it or not.

The sliding knob on the far left is the throttle. Push it to the choke position to start when the engine is cold, push it to the tortoise to start when it is warm, push it to the hare for mowing, and put it in between when moving around when not mowing.
The yellow knob on the right is for the blades. Pull it up to engage the blades. Press it to not only cut the blades but to also engage a brake to rapidly stop them.
The key has four positions. Off, On-with-headlights, On, and Start.

This leaves that little orange button. This is the "go backwards while mowing" permission button. Press that, you can go into reverse while the mower is mowing. Otherwise you have to stop the blades and then go into reverse.

On the left is a lever for blade height. Seven positions from about 3cm to about 8cm. I think I did my cut on level 4. I might have preferred level 3, but at the point it was clogging too much, and I didn't think to put the level down when I raised the deflector.

On the right is a gearstick. There are five forward speeds and reverse. Just like with Marte, I did most of my cut in third speed which was a little too fast, while more delicate (or unsteady ground) was done in second which was a little slow. I think next time I will give it a try in third but knocking the throttle back a little.

The blade deck doesn't appear to be removable, which presents a problem when it comes to cleaning. The "official" way to clean is to hook a hosepipe into a fixing for that, and run the machine with the blades active for a couple of minutes, then do the same on the other side. Unfortunately while this did clear a lot of the grass, it left some behind. I think I might need to buy one of those things that allows you to tip the entire mower up so the underside is accessible.

So I've pointed out all of the issues, which while they're sometimes annoying one can't expect a cheap ride-on to behave like an expensive one.

So let's look at some of the positives. As I mentioned, the grass looks much better without having one blade always skimming the ground. The fuel was split between two sources, so I'm not sure how much fuel this mower requires, but it surely can't be as much as that thirsty Tecumseh engine. Speaking of engines, it makes noise as you'd expect but it is quieter. Speaking of quiet, the deck mechanism is really quiet. There's a hiccup as the blades engage, but there's no reassuring vrooooooo sound. More than once I knew the blades were turning only because of the stuff being thrown out the side.

Pictured above just looks like a pulley under the engine. Actually, it's a lot more complicated than that. It's an electrostatic clutch, or a PTO clutch. When I pull the button up, a powerful coil is energised which pulls up either a steel disc or armature. Whatever, this causes the belt to become powered and thus turn the blades. While it is a part that can fail. The internet is all over the place here, but it seems like they can be expected to last 600 to 1000 hours. For me that's 200-333 cuts. If I do... how often do I actually cut the grass? Once a month except November-February (normally) and maybe twice a month in the Spring? So let's say 12 times a year. Since I have a nicer newer mower, let's say 15. That's 13 to 22 years. I rather think something else may have become a problem by that point, don't you?

Spring is here!

Would you believe this picture was taken at 2.21pm?

Out back, that tree - and I have no idea what it is - that's an early profusion of little white flowers.

Alas, the weather is changing. No more 15 and 16. It will now be 10s and 11s, with lows of 3 to 5, give or take a little.

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