Fixing A PowerSmart Mower That Won't Start

A co-worker reached out to me and asked me if I could look at their lawnmower and of course I said yes the issue is that I should have asked them what brand it was because to be honest I had known it was going to be this brand I would have told them no I've got better things to do like my taxes and trying to plan my next trip to a landfill which is where This one belongs unfortunately it's here now so I guess I could at least take a look at it in today's video we look at this Power Smart lawnmower and the problem is that quite surprisingly it won't start now I didn't get much information about it but apparently it was only used once or twice before the season was over and then it went into storage and just like clockwork when the next mowing season came around it wouldn't start to be honest I thought this was going to be an easy case but it turned out it was anything but that now I'm going to try and repair this mower however it may not be the exact repair you need to make to yours we'll explore other options later in the video now we're only going to mention what these other options could be we don't have enough time to look into them but if you need more information on these options you're welcome to ask as many questions as you need to first off if you didn't know this has to be one of the worst mowers I've had a chance to work on the quality of materials is questionable and its durability is just what you expect from an overseas engine maker now it looks like a mower but if you stare at it long enough you'd swear you could see it coming apart while it's sitting still joking aside do not buy this mower the first thing to do would be to see what I'm working with so it looks like we have plenty of gasoline in the tank although who knows what kind of condition it's in that means we need to drain it so we can examine it now the oil should look great for only being used a couple of times however it seems to be a bit dark for only being a couple hours on the engine so I'm beginning to question the information I've been given but at least it's at the right level for once let's see what happens when we try and start it of course it's not going to start and the best part is it didn't even try next I'm going to throw out the carb and the fuel as a reason why it won't start and I'll do that by putting some fuel into the carp's throat thank you so this is a first for me this engine just jammed I can't pull on the Rope at all in this situation do not use the rope to free the engine because you could break the Rope or possibly damage the recoil system unfortunately this puts our troubleshooting to a standstill but I'm pretty confident I'll be able to free it in the meantime I'll get it up on the table so we can get a better look at it with the mower on the table it's much easier to drain the fuel so that's what we'll start with so the gasoline is not in terrible condition by the color it seems to be only a few months old so it's still usable I also don't see any water at the bottom of the jar but if there was any water in it it would have made its way to the carb so we'll have to drain the fuel from there as well emptying the rest of the gasoline that's left in the tank now there's still no water here either so I have a feeling the fuel in the car will be fine as well while the mower is at a convenient height I'm also going to lubricate the wheels the main reason to do this is to keep them from wearing out on the axle which would make it wobble like a shopping cart a mega Mart now this is going to spin for quite some time so we'll come back to it later on and see if it's still spinning if it's finally stopped so if I try turning the engine by using the blade it still doesn't want to rotate which is quite surprising now I don't want to use too much force so I'm going to remove the spark plug just in case it's hydrolog if so taking out the plug would help to get it free now after getting the spark plug out I'm not surprised to see that it's an overseas plug so we're gonna have to check it and see if it still works and the plug is not covered in oil or fuel so I don't think it's Hydro locked unfortunately even with the spark plug out of the engine it's still not free to rotate which is not a good sign and if we take a look back at the wheel it's still spinning so we'll have to check on it later on the next thing I want to do is check to see if there's an issue with the valve train that's keeping the engine from spinning the issue is that if the problem isn't here it might be inside the engine which is a really bad situation to have after trying to free the engine again this time it finally breaks free and it's now rotating just like it should I really can't explain what happened to it but for me I think there's a clearance issue inside the engine that's causing it to jam up now since the engine is now free and I'm about to lose my lighting this would be a great time to test if we have a spark from the ignition system so it looks like we have spark from the ignition system which means we have two of the three major components for this engine to start Fuel and Spark the last thing we need to check for is compression but since we have the valve train open and visible I want to check the valve lash now normally I would take a shortcut by putting one of the valves all the way down but this time I'm going to put the Piston to top dead center where the Piston is at the top of the compression stroke I do apologize but I don't remember what the valve lash is or the clearance between the top of the valve and the rocker arm is supposed to be for this particular engine so I'm going to use a 5 000 of an inch feeler gauge what I'm going to do is Slide the feeler gauge into the clearance and feel how tight it is it should just drag in the clearance but unfortunately it's very loose now I would normally find out what the clearance had grown to but for the sake of time I'm only going to make my adjustments to adjust the clearance I'm going to hold the inner bolt and loosen the jam nut once loose I'll then make small adjustments to the inner bolt until the feeler gauge just drags in the clearance I'll then hold the bolt and then tighten the jam nut and then check the clearance one more time and make adjustments if I need to I'll then do the same procedure for the upper rocker arm so why is this important if the valve lash is too large it could open the valves later than it's supposed to and if the valve lash is too tight it could affect the engine compression both of these situations will cause an issue with how the engine runs once I've set the clearance I'll then clean the gasket surface on the head and also remove the old gasket material from the valve cover after that I'll then apply a rather messy bead of gasket maker on the valve cover carefully replace it and then install the bolts now I'm not going to tighten the bolts yet instead I'm going to have the bolts finger tight I'll then let the gasket maker set up for a few hours then go back and tighten the bolts the next item I want to check is the key on the flywheel the reason I want to check it is because we might have spark but if it's happening at the wrong time it won't help to start the engine now the flywheel has two magnets on it when it passes by the ignition coil it will then produce a spark at the plug so this is another option as to why this engine might not be starting if the flywheel is keyed to the crankshaft and if the key gets sheared it will then cause the spark to happen at the wrong time so how does the key get sheared now this typically happens when you hit something hard with the blade on the mower something like a rock a piece of concrete or even a stump you'll know if that's the case because there might be a gouge somewhere on the Leading Edge of the blade now I didn't see any damage to this blade but I still want to check it now after getting a plastic fan out of the way we can finally see the keyway but I've never seen this style before which means I'll need to remove the flywheel to examine it foreign now there are different ways to remove the flywheel but using a puller is probably the safest way it'll keep you from damaging the crank or the flywheel now with it gone we can finally see the key however the key is still intact with no signs of damage so unfortunately that means the ignition timing is not what's keeping the engine from starting the next thing I want to do is to do a compression test and see if that's the issue we're having I want to try using the pull rope and see what kind of reading we get so I'll have to put the engine back together but before I do that I also want to check on the spark plug and see if it's working as well it's also been several hours since resealing the valve cover so I want to check on that sample button I made for myself now I didn't want the gasket maker to completely set up I only want it to be a bit tacky with a lot of body the reason why is that I didn't want it to be squished out of the mating Surface by torquing the bolts down while it was still soft so here's the sample button I made for myself and yes I know it's not the correct size to be tested but then again I'm not working on an airplane it's just a lawnmower it's definitely got some body to it so I think it's safe to tighten the bolts down and no I'm not going to be using a torque wrench for this one either and that's because it hasn't come back from being calibrated yet now to test the spark plug I'm going to use my tester that I got from a mega online store and since I'm not close to an outlet I'm going to use this tiny portable power station now even though I don't care for this particular brand of spark plug I do not change plugs unless they have an issue with them so it seems the spark plug is working just like it's supposed to now to properly test the spark plug I need to put it into a pressure vessel and run the test again but I'm not equipped to do that so this will have to do at least we know the ignition system is working so the last thing we need to check is the compression for this one I'm going to use my compression tester and it's going to measure how much pressure the engine can make on the compression stroke and we want to see a reading well above 100 PSI if you need one of these there's a link in the description foreign so the reading is only 75 PSI and even though that's not close to 100 there is a good reason for it this engine has a compression release that makes it easier to pull the Rope so the reading is going to be lower than normal now to overcome the compression release we'll need to use a drill to turn the engine over foreign [Music] so the new reading is around 120 PSI and even though that sounds much better it shows that we have a serious problem this engine is already worn out and even though the reading is low it's more than enough to start and run since we know it has enough compression I think it's time for another test start but this time I'm going to cheat and use the drill to help get it started [Music] well that's not how I expected the test to go at all first it took a lot of turning before it started to run and secondly it was very slow to start the last thing was that it ran a lot longer than it should have so I wonder if the carb was supplying some fuel to the engine there's also oil coming out of the muffler so I have to wonder just how much oil is actually in the engine and what kind of condition is it in I think it'd be a good idea to inspect the oil because I have a feeling there's something going on here so right off the bat there's a problem this oil is too dark to have a couple of hours on it in fact if I had to guess it looks to have at least one whole season on it the worst part is that this oil is the same oil that was first poured into it and if you didn't know you need to break in an engine and then change that oil if not the result is that that metal that's in the oil will then cause the engine to wear out faster than it's supposed to which is what I think happened here in fact there's so much metal in the oil that I'm gonna have to flush the engine again to try and remove any remaining debris now I don't normally do this I only do this for extreme situations just like this one I would not make this a regular procedure to do now after dumping out the oil again you can see there's still plenty of debris in it that means I'm gonna have to keep doing this until I don't see the metal in the pan it's quite unfortunate but reading the owner's manual would have prevented this situation now the second flush looks a lot better even though the gasoline is still gray I don't see any particles in the pan like the last time I don't think I'm gonna do it again instead I'm gonna let any remaining gasoline evaporate inside the engine which should take about a couple hours to do then I'll put some oil back into it remember to follow the filling instructions for your particular engine and remember not to overfill it otherwise you could damage it if you do overfill it simply tip the mower over and pour some of it out the last thing I want to do is clear the fuel jet inside the car but however I don't think we'll need to remove the car but based on how the engine was running during the test start what I'm going to do is remove the bowl and if it looks decent I'll then clear the jet while the carb is still on the engine now if I pull the bowl and it looks terrible it's recommended that we take the carb off for a full cleaning so there is a small amount of debris in the bottom of the bowl however it's not that bad at all so I'm going to run this wire through the jet and work to clear the opening now you can't see what I'm doing and to be honest neither can I but what I'm doing is making sure I can push at least an inch or more of the wire into the pickup tube if you're hitting something about a half an inch up in the tube it means you're hitting the side of the jet try to push the wire in the middle of the tube and you should get it into the jet once I've cleared the jet I'll then replace the bowl in the nut and then put the same fuel we took out of it earlier back into the tank because I think it's still good and then we'll try starting it if you're not sure your fuel is good then replace it with some fresh Fuel and save that old stuff to be used as a cleaner for grease and oil now I poured the old gasoline into this glass jar because it's easier to pour without making a mess otherwise I'll have to use a funnel and even then that large glass jar still makes a huge mess hmm thank you so it was a bit of a slow start but it finally started and seemed to run okay there was also some oil in the muffler which started to burn as the exhaust started to get hot but it cleared up after a minute or so now the self-propelled seemed to work okay and if you wanted to know how this self-propelled Stacks up against other self-propels from different brands click on the link at the top of the screen now this field of grass isn't very dense but it's much taller than the area I normally do my testing at and to be honest it did really well I also have to be truthful in saying this but I'm not sure why this engine wouldn't start and also why it locked up the way it did during our first test start if I had to take a guess it had to be the massive loss in compression due to the break-in oil never being changed out and the reason for it locking up I'd have to say it's just a bad Quality Engine and something inside the engine got out of alignment causing it to lock up so it's been about 30 minutes and I'm back in my normal area the engine isn't completely cold but I'd like to see how it starts and if it's gonna smoke again out of the muffler foreign well it's still starting slow so I'm gonna guess the low compression from the engine is the cause forward otherwise there's an issue with the governor either way I don't expect this mower to last several seasons in fact I hope it makes it through this season so in the end this mower is working again but to be honest I'm not a big fan of this brand at all and I would implore you do not buy it if someone asks you if you want a working lawnmower for free and it's this brand declined the offer this mower is not a quality machine it might look like a lawnmower but it's actually a boat anchor on Wheels You're simply asking for trouble if you think this mower will last half as long as any other current mower available on the market so my question is would you be willing to take the Power Smart Challenge and use this mower for the next season and see if you can keep it running without any major headaches if you say yes you're a better person than me thank you for watching I really do appreciate your time here please feel free to ask me any questions about this project or your own projects and I hope to see you in the next video

Channel: INSIDE HOUSE GARAGE

Views: 39,778

Keywords: mower, honda, husqvarna, poulan, toro, troybilt, troy, craftsman, craftsmen, 216, 217, harmony, lawnmower, won't, start, will, not, starting, starts, run, running, runs, work, works, working, problem, fix, diy, grass, mow, yard, yardmachine, home, garage, inside, house, air, filter, spark, oil, gas, carb, carburetor, clean, rebuild, ultrasonic, bowl, jet, clogged, clog, clear, wheel, deck, blade, pull, rope, cap, line, bag, clooged, water, easy, simple, mountfield, snapper, self, propel, shakes, commercial, exmark, Tecumseh, transmission, drive, cub, cadet, Murray, lawn

Id: fohb9MyFyqc

Length: 17min 33sec (1053 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 28 2022