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As my Mower Wars original thread got 430 hits it intimated that a lot of people like to see me suffer on my repairs With this in mind here is the next installment of the (mini-series)

Through a succession of poor decisions yesterday I ended up with a pig of a job today. As reported in the duff batteries thread I was laurel cutting yesterday. When I checked my chipper prior to rolling it out I saw the petrol tank was empty. I then realised my petrol can was empty too and as I could not be bothered to go to the garage for fuel I decided to use my mower to reduce the green waste to manageable volumes. Now this will work if you trim out the thicker wood and just leave the thinner stuff that is still soft. Of course, I missed a branch and I heard a clatter and the mower stalls. After removing the offending stick I find it has acted like a derailleur and the dive belt has come off. The mower still worked but I had no self propulsion.

Today I decided to refit the belt, far from easy and a lot of faff. First off I drained the engine oil and fuel with a syringe-type gadget I have to suck it out. I could then turn the mower on its side to work on it. The first job was to remove the blade and this took me ages. To avoid this I wasted time trying to refit the belt without taking the blade off but this was hopeless. I eventually did it by wedging the blade and using a club hammer on the wrench to undo the nut, it was a pig. Once that was off it was relatively easy to refit the belt and get it all back together, in all about two hours. It works again now.

If I had not been lazy and gone to get the petrol I would have avoided all this. Grrrrrr...

DWD

My chipper felt left out and packed up yesterday. On inspection, it was all clogged up and I had to clear the discharge pipe to allow the chippings to flow through again. Now you can take part of the discharge chute off and the feed chute to expose the block. This is about 7 nuts with the washers, spring washer, and bolts. I use my combi drill with a socket drive to speed this up. I cleared all the impacted green waste and although there is not a clear view up the fixed part of the discharge pipe I hooked out the debris thinking that a blast on the motor would clear it. I duly fit the feed chute back and fire up, A cloud of fine green waste gets thrown out so I am good to go (I think) The first couple of Laurel stems go in but I do not see anything coming out. I take the feed chute off again and find that it is all jammed up again around the cutter block. I am faced with taking the side plate off now to reveal the cutting block chamber which is seven difficult bolt sets. Barked knuckles and 20 minutes later I have it all stripped down. I now have a clearer view of the discharge chute by the cutting block end and I see a curly piece of Ivy wood that has lodged around the edges. This was trapping the outflow building up until it was all blocked but I could not see it before and my blind hooking missed it. Reassembled and it all works again. Two hours nearly wasted all because of a bit of springy ivy. Grrrrr......you could not make it up.

DWD