Challenges!

It's been a tough couple of weeks for my lawn care regimen. These challenges have not been the end of the world, but it really seemed they all came at once.

First, my mower began having difficulties and was dying despite the gas tank being full. I pulled off the carburetor and cleaned it out but that didn't fix it. I tried a new spark plug and still no better. I finally decided to drain the gas and that's when I discovered there was a vacuum problem. Basically, while draining the tank, it stopped draining while it was still halfway filled. This led me to find that the problem all along was the gas cap vent was clogged. This was preventing the gas from flowing to the carburetor. I sprayed some carb cleaner through the vent in the cap.  While I had the tank off, I also adjusted the governor to give it a boost to the RPMs. The mower is running great, now.

Next, I noticed that there was some fungus attacking the lawn. I believe it is brown patch and I don't want it to run rampant so I grabbed some Bayer fungicide and applied it to the lawn but that led to the next challenge.

I had finished spreading over the back yard and was halfway through the front when my spreader's impeller broke. It was a plastic shaft style one and the plastic had snapped off. I was able to finish the front lawn by putting it in place by hand but if I hit a bump or jostled it too much, the impeller would fall again. It made for a frustrating and slow application, but I was able to finish.

I got a replacement one off of craigslist yesterday. It's an older craftsman model but at least is has the metal shaft so I shouldn't have the same problem again. It does have a bigger hopper and is more rugged overall.  I got it for $15 so I made out pretty well price-wise and scored an overall upgrade.