Fixing A Troy-Bilt Mower That Won't Start

I'm always amazed at how simple these little mowers are And yet when I start to work on one I'll sometimes find that it has multiple issues with it it's just a cheap engine bolted to a molding Deck with a blade connected to it you put oil and gasoline in it not in the same place of course and finally you have four wheels at Each corner how many things can go wrong with it well you're about to find out and it's way more than I thought possible in today's video we're going to be looking at this Troy Built branded lawnmower and the problem is that it won't start the worst part though is that it barely tries to do anything even after putting fuel into the car's throat the funny part though was that it contradicts what I've been told about this mower in fact there are so many things wrong with it that it was difficult to keep count now I'm going to try and repair this mower but yours might be different so this might not work on yours so if things are not working out for you like in the video please ask about it I'll be glad to answer your questions so the background on this mower is that it belongs to a good friend of mine who got it from their neighbor now I'm not really sure how the interaction went but they did tell my friend that it does start and run but one of the wheels is having a tough time spinning it was also missing the air filter and its cover which is kind of a pain since missing parts just means you have to spend more money to replace them of course I doubt their neighbor is any kind of a mechanic and in their mind it was working just like it was supposed to but I can't assure you that this mower was far from perfect and not even close to being usable and when you see all the things I found Raw along with this mower you'll understand why I put it that way of course you don't have to be a mechanic to realize that they were at least correct about one of the wheels being stuck so I'll give them that one as for the rest of the issues that it has well I guess I can't blame them either but their lack of detail is a bit disturbing now in the last video we tried to start it but what happened or should I say what didn't happen was a bit concerning to say the least so the engine did try to start but it was the most pathetic thing I'd ever seen and it won't be the last time either thank you I don't know if you were able to catch it but it had one little cough and that was it like I said it wasn't much of a start but it was something though now my first thought was that if there was water in the fuel it would have made it to the carb and eventually into the engine and if it did that water might be making it extremely difficult for the engine to start and run and what do you know it looks like there's several ounces of water at the bottom of the jar that had drained the fuel into so my guess is that since the engine did try to start it does have a working ignition system and possibly just enough compression to start and run but we won't be able to find out until we fix all the issues this mower has and then try it again oh and if you're counting water in the gasoline would be the first problem of many more but we didn't have to wait too long to find another issue which is a choke flap that's open instead of being closed and if you didn't know on this style of Choke this flap is supposed to be closed when the engine is cold but as you can see it was stuck open so there was no fuel enrichment for cold starts of course the choke flap being stuck open would be problem number two but hold on there's more as you can see this is the linkage for the choke bypass and it's not supposed to be visible but as you can plainly see it is so is this yet another problem and the answer is yes because it is visible it means something's wrong with its orientation and if that is the case it'll have an impact on how the choke system works or in this case doesn't work so we're only three minutes into this project we've already found three problems that's causing some serious issues with this mower you gotta wonder how they use this mower with it having all these issues or am I just missing something once the top cover was off the engine it was confirmed that there was something wrong with the linkage but I still want to get a better look at it so we'll need to get to the carb after getting the air filter base out of the way it's pretty obvious why the choke isn't working like it should the arm has come off the post and was getting jammed against the other arm now I could just put the lever back on its post but since we're here I'm going to take this opportunity to service the carb I know they said it was in working condition but after seeing all these issues I don't want to take any chances a long time ago I used to remove the carb to service it but in that time I've gotten really lazy now I just dropped the bowl to get a glimpse of how bad it is first and then decide if I need to take it off I would always recommend that you take the carb off to service it because it's better but there are a couple of items you have to watch out for and you're about to see one of those right now so as you just saw there was some water mixed in with the gasoline in the bowl but there was nothing really that disturbing that would cause me to take the carb off that was until something caught my eye I don't think I would have paid that much attention to it except for the fact that I've been actively looking for issues but I almost missed this one what you're seeing is the O-ring that seals the carb to the intake pipe but the problem is that you're not supposed to be able to see it it's supposed to be sitting on the back side of the car but hidden by the retainer but with it in this location it's not going to do any real sealing so here is the retainer and the O-ring should be sitting behind it but after popping it off you can see it's not there and of course the reason why is because it's still sitting on the intake pipe will just remove it from the pipe and put it back in its proper location followed by the retainer now I'm not sure how this could have happened by accident most times you'll find that both the over ring and the retainer will come loose from the carb but I've never seen the O-ring switch places with the retainer without being done on purpose after replacing the O-ring followed by the retainer I'll then make sure the fuel jet is cleared otherwise fuel will not be able to make it to the engine after clearing the opening I'll then follow that up with some carb cleaner and then once I know that the opening is clear I thought it was going to replace the bowl until I noticed how dirty the carb was where the O-ring seals at now if you don't clean off the dirt it might cause the carp to leak around the O-ring which has happened to me before after removing a float and needle and cleaning off the dirt I'll then put the carp back together of course if you don't want to go through the hassle of making sure the carb is in working condition then I would just order a new carb and since the original carb is plastic there's no point in getting a high priced OEM carb so a cheap aftermarket one will do just fine of course if you want to spin twice as much for an oem quality plastic carb go for it as for me you know which one I'm getting once that's done I'll then install the car but back onto the engine and this is when everything could go wrong wrong the reason why I avoid taking the carb off is because everything you take off you have to put back on which means it's another opportunity for something bad to happen which is what happened here first I put the O-ring back on in the wrong location and then when they were connecting the bypass linkage they installed it backwards and if that wasn't bad enough when they attached the arm for the pivot they didn't push down hard enough to get it to seat correctly so it popped back off and caused all sorts of issues now since we opened the carb and messed with it we need to make sure it's not going to leak and to check it all we need to do is to put a few ounces of fuel into the tank and then wait and within a few minutes fuel will either drip from the front of the carb or from underneath it fortunately this one doesn't seem to be doing that that means we can now move on to the wheels and hopefully find out why that one wheel isn't spinning like it should now if you find a wheel that spins pretty good already I would only spray lube on the back side of the wheel where the axle is that way you can focus your time on any bad Wheels which is what I've got right here so more than likely the steel insert in the wheel is stuck to the axle and it's the plastic that's spinning on the insert and since the insert is gnarled it's not spinning smoothly and as you can see the insert is not in the wheel like it's supposed to be and it's still sitting on the axle just like I thought it would be now this is the tricky part how do you work the insert off the axle so this is the hard lesson I had to learn and the answer is brake cleaner now years ago I would have used a spray lube all over it hoping that it would loosen it but what it did was make it increasingly difficult to grab and turn now I've learned to use brake cleaner which will penetrate the rust and help to break it up and not cause you to have a grip issue after that just work it a bit at a time and eventually it will come off at some point we don't need all that grip you can put some lube on it but only once you know that it's going to come loose after that it's simply a matter of cleaning off the rust on the axle and the insert and then applying a generous amount of lube so how does this even happen simple it's moisture it depends on how much water was in the lawn when you mowed or if you decided to wash your mower but didn't move it that much afterwards but if you spray lube on it once a year at the beginning of the year or at the end to the mowing season this should be enough to keep your wheel from getting stuck of course there are no guarantees but it's a good investment of your time and a three dollar can of lube otherwise you have to spend your time doing what I'm doing which I have to say is no fun at all once we've got it cleaned lubed and put back onto the mower you can see just how much of a difference it makes at least we'll be able to push it around the yard with a lot less effort now now the other Wheels were not as bad as this one but they did need to be cleaned and lubed just the same after the cleaning the reading we got with the pull meter was extremely good at 1.1 kilograms which is even better than I was hoping for now at this point there's not much else we can do except try to start it and see what happens and this is when things go terribly wrong thank you it's still not wanting to start just like before so I'm going to take off the air filter to see if it might be the issue so without the filter on it at least tried to start now to make sure it's not a fuel related issue I'm going to put some into the carb's throat and see what happens foreign so this time it didn't even try and start which makes me think there's either too much fuel in the engine or there might be too much moisture in the cylinder now if that is the case the only way I know how to deal with this situation is to spin the engine over a lot faster by using my drill after using the drill to get the engine to spin fast enough we finally got it to start and eventually it came to life and even though it was slow to get to Speed it finally got there now I did let it run for about three minutes and even though that's not all that long it's enough that I can see that the thermostat bypass is working like it should now that we got it to start by using the drill we need to make sure it's going to start by using the recoil otherwise I won't be able to sell it foreign so luckily it started on the second pool which is pretty good but now that it's hot well let's start back up just as easily as before so this time it took a few more pulls to start which isn't terrible but I prefer to be a lot better than that so for me I'd like to be able to start the mower with one to two pools and not three or more whether the engine is cold or hot now this may not seem like a big deal to you but being able to easily start an engine with at most too soft and easy pulls on the Rope is a huge selling point or do I need to look like the rock to start this mower now after I get this oil change that doesn't look like it's been changed in a really long time other than trying to start it again and hopefully it'll be easier to start this time and for those of you who have a particular oil you want to use go for it but for the rest of us I'd recommend that you read the owner's manual and decide if you want to follow it or make a different Choice the only thing I would recommend is that you do not overfill the oil stay in the marked area on the dipstick if possible and if you do go over carefully dump out the extra oil all right so this time it took even more polls to start it which is not good yes it could have been because I had the mower on its side doing the oil change but I did start the mower a few more times cold after filming and sometimes it took two pools while other times it took a lot more this is of course a huge improvement from before we started working on it but I think we can get it working better but we'll have to wait for a different day so after all that how many things did we find wrong on this mower I unfortunately stopped counting but I'll list them again and then you'll see just how bad this one really was problem number one was Finding water in the fuel problem number two was an open choke flap that was related to problem number three which was the choke bypass system being installed incorrectly problem number four was the wrong location for the O-ring on the intake pipe problem number five which was the issue with the wheels being tough to rotate and the one that was completely stuck and the sixth problem is a hard start which of course is more than likely a maintenance issue now there was one more issue but I'm not going to include it on this list instead I'll wait for the next video I don't know about you but most of these issues were not incidental most required them to be done wrong but then again I can't fault them for trying I can however point out all the mistakes though so my question is after seeing all these mistakes doesn't make you want to switch over to something less complicated whether that be a real manual mower or the battery stuff to be honest I wouldn't blame you thank you for watching I really do appreciate your time here please feel free to ask me any questions about this project or about your own projects and I hope to see you in the next video

Channel: INSIDE HOUSE GARAGE

Views: 23,704

Keywords: mower, honda, husqvarna, poulan, toro, troybilt, troy, craftsman, craftsmen, 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, lawn boy

Id: jSf-oXzS6nU

Length: 14min 19sec (859 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 03 2023