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manual mowing again

My 20-year-old little Honda mulching mower is still gimpy. The quality time we spent together in the shop did not make it young and spry – like I am.

I recognize a fuel-flow problem, but am unable to find a fuel filter anywhere. If there is one, it most assuredly is clogged with 20 years of impurities because I have never seen it; never changed it. But it is not to be found, and definitely not anything like the picture I found online.

If there isn’t one, this will be the first time in recent memory a manufacture of reputable power mowers did not put one in.

We will return to the shop, Old Mr. Honda and I, to go another round with my tools. But it darn well better straighten up and fly right. I have enough tools to turn it into a pile of scrap. If it understood the gravity of its predicament, it would start itself and run like a top.

old faithful in the upper left corner

old faithful in the upper left corner

I will prevail … even if I have to modify the fuel tank and add an external fuel filter … or teach it a lesson and give him no filter at all.

Meanwhile, thanks to several days of strong rain, I did get more than a little behind on my mowing. It MUST be done very, very soon. Out comes the mower than runs great, just as long as I can walk STRONG and push FIRMLY for an extended period of time.

I don’t know if Old Mr. Honda is laughing or nervous, but we did get that lawn mowed while it sat in the corner cooling its carb.

Mowing up slopes are extra challenging when cutting much grass and pretty-much impossible in areas of thick, strong, tall grass growth. So quite a bit was about a third of a pass downhill, roll it back up, catch a fresh new third while re-cutting the mostly-cut two thirds.

The major take-away here is:
Do Not get behind if you are going to mow with Old Faithful Mower.

I also worked up a genuine, gym-worthy, cardio-time-length sweat.

This is not a bad thing. It might even be a good thing. It is hard to give up using a nice tool such as Old Mr. Honda the mulching mower, but I really should regularly be getting some cardio workout and confess that I am not. I pedal like a 65-year old cruiser either on my stationary bike, or on the out-in-the-gorgeous-Bitterroot pawn-shop bike. That and yard/shop work ARE my exercise program.

A dead Honda might be okay… a good idea even.

I dunno. I can’t embrace that concept yet.

Awful hard to not go another round with the challenger.

Almost impossible to let it rot, unused and unusable.