Trying To Fix A Snapper Mower That's Shaking A Lot

how many times have I found a mower sitting by the curb being given away or one that I found online or someone just gave up on it simply because it didn't start just how many mowers have I saved from the trash person or the crusher at the recyclers now at this point I've lost count but I will say one thing not much is going to keep me from getting the stuff I find working again I simply have a need to fix stuff this one though could be the one to change all that in today's video we're going to be looking at this Snapper branded lawnmower and the problem is that it starts but it doesn't run well at all and it's shaking way more than it should now the most common reason for a mower to shake like this one would be a bent crankshaft or something as simple as part of the blade breaking off and causing it to be out of balance hopefully this one will be the easier problem because it'll be simple to fix otherwise this video could turn into a nightmare now I'm going to try and repair this mower but yours might be a little 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 now when I first got this mower it looked really bad but to be honest I've seen a lot worse so it didn't really dawn on me just how bad things could really be of course after having cleaned it really well you couldn't tell that it used to look like a steamy pile of hot garbage but that's what happens when you take care of a mower it might be broken on the inside but at least from the outside well you can't really tell now I do want to show you what this mower looked like and sounded like when we tried to start it in the last video and when you see how it's running you might be able to guess what's wrong with it by how much it's shaking but if you can't figure it out hold on for just a minute or two and you'll see just how bad these projects can be so as you can see it started on the first poll which is pretty amazing considering the kind of condition it's in but the self-propelled seems to be not working like it should and the only real issue at least for me as a fixer would be the amount of shaking going on because let's face it even if you didn't know anything about mowers if you saw it shaking that much you'd be asking for a discount as well now it turns out the front right wheel is stuck which on this type of self-propelled would definitely cause problems with it not working that means we'll have to take a look at this wheel if we want to get the self-propelled working right after we figure out what's going on with this engine now I did make sure there was plenty of oil in the engine the first time I tried to start it but I noticed that I didn't see any oil on the dipstick this time which is a bit disturbing so I added some oil to the engine off camera that way I could film the next part of the repair but what I found out next was absolutely jarring so I turned around to get something that was behind me when I realized there was a trail of oil coming from you guessed it the mower that I just put oil in I then started to put two and two together and rolled the mower on its side to see just how bad the leak was and I was not ready for what I saw it was quite literally dripping out of the bottom of the engine which is something I've never seen before at least when I wasn't expecting it now at this point I really didn't have a choice as to what I wanted to do so before I could go on I had to find the leak and fix it otherwise No One's Gonna buy a mower that can't hold any oil in it now I've never had to deal with it before but my first guess was that the crank seal must have been damaged or it may have unseated itself but to find out I'd have to take off the blade the belt guard and the blade adapter now the only thing though was that the bolt holding on the blade to the crankshaft was on so tight that I needed to use a cheater bar just to loosen it there's just one big problem though I severely doubt that someone put that bolt on with an impact set to maximum torque instead what typically happens is that the blade has hit something very tough like a green tree stump or a large root and it basically stopped the engine now when this happens sometimes it'll damage the blade adapter but it also inadvertently turned the bolt causing it to tighten itself unfortunately if that happens it means that there's a good chance of not owning the bladed adapter being damaged and needs replacing but the chances are good that the crankshaft might be bent as well you can also see that a lot of the oil has been soaked up by the dirt that was hiding in the belt guard so we'll have to remember to clean this up before I put it back on speaking of cleaning before I go on I need to clean the bottom of the engine the best I can that way I'll have a better chance of finding our leak now at the moment I'm not able to see anything wrong with the engine just yet so the crank seal is the most likely suspect now after a final rinse to get rid of the dirt I'll then work the belt off the pulley on the adapter and then try to remove it but there's a big problem now typically on this type of adapter when the blade hits something hard and the engine stops the key that's stamped into the blade adapter will be pushed back out now it's tough to tell while the adapter is still on the shaft but the one big giveaway is that the adapter will be very difficult to remove from it in fact on this one I had to keep working the crank bolt back out until I finally decided to take it off while the engine was on the table instead now if you find that once you've loosened the adapter but it's still very tough to take off more than likely the adapter might be damaged in this very way now this was done on purpose the designers realized that one of the problems that a mower can have is going to be related to the mower hitting something that it shouldn't be so to keep from damaging the crankshaft which costs a lot to replace the design the adapter to take the damage instead plus it's a lot easier and cheaper to replace now before I get to the engine I need to find out what's going on with the wheels that's causing our self-propelled not to work so as you can see the left Drive wheel spins just fine but as it spins it's not affecting the other wheel at all now what typically happens is the wheel will get Frozen to the axle that it spins on with rust so that means we need to take it off the mower and see just how bad it really is now even though I know front wheel drive is not as effective as the rear drive systems we still need the wheels to spin and not get stuck after getting the nut off the axle we then find out just how bad it really is as you can see I'm having difficulties removing the Wheel from the mower but after a few love Taps for Mr hammer and a lot of effort it finally came off the axle and this is when we see just how bad it really is as you can see the steel insert almost got stuck to the axle and started to come out of the wheel of course Mr Hammer can fix that after that all we need to do is to clean any dirt or rust from the axle and then apply a generous amount of any kind of lube you want so what kind of lube am I talking about well it can be clean motor oil petroleum jelly or even automatic transmission fluid any type of lube would be better than none at all now since the insert almost got stuck we'll have to clean that as well now this part is something I don't normally do but for this one I think it's necessary after that I'll then spray all the parts that make contact with other metal Parts using a thin Lube or with lithium grease and once I'm satisfied with how it looks I'll then install the wheel back onto the mower and see just how much better it works and as you can tell it's now 10 times better than what it was doing before I'm pretty certain the self-propelled is going to work now but we won't know until later on after that I'll do the same process for the other Drive wheel and even though it was not stuck it'll benefit from it just the same and possibly keep it from getting stuck in the future so how do the wheels get stuck like this in the first place well the best answer is of course moisture probably from the mower sitting outside in the rain for a long period of time now it's not going to get like this if it gets rained on once or a handful of times it needs to be outside and unused for quite a long time after getting rained on so what about washing a lawn mower will that do the same thing yet again you'd have to drench the mower in water and then just leave it in the same spot unused for about a year or more however if you start the mower up and move it around a bit before putting it back into the garage or shed you should be fine just as long as you get back to it in a short amount of time now the non-driven wheels don't ever get stuck and the reason why is because they typically don't have any inserts in them of course the higher priced mowers might be a bit different but using a bit of light Lube on the back of the axle should take care of them okay enough messing around it's now time to see just how bad this crank seal really is I do want to at least give it a quick clean just so I can get the best view possible now there is the possibility that I might have to take the sump off the engine and if so I want to make sure that none of the dirt gets inside the engine however things go from bad to extremely bad pretty quickly now at this point the stock bolt is now too short so I had to use a longer bolt instead just so that I have enough travel to get the adapter off the crank but after getting the adapter off the crankshaft I noticed that it looks as though the top edge of the pulley has somehow made contact with the sump now this should not even be possible which means something terrible must be wrong with the engine for this to happen and as you'll see here in a bit I wasn't too far off now the only way this could happen is if the crank had too much play in it which is not a good thing to have so at this point I'm not even worried about the crank seal leaking instead I'm worried about the crankshaft itself now after moving the crankshaft back and forth there seems to be a little bit more play in it than I really like but to get a better look at it I need to release the flywheel brake but that's when things get a lot worse of course if I'm gonna have the break off I might as well take out the spark plug that way it'll be easy to rotate the engine and check to see if the crankshaft really is bent now once the spark plug is out of the engine I'll then put a line across the screen and use it as a reference point against the end of the crankshaft that way when I rotate the engine I'll be able to see if it moves away from the line now I know it's a bit tough to see from this angle but it certainly seems like it is bent because the end of the shaft keeps moving towards and away from the line now if you don't have your camera on you or you're by yourself you should be able to see it from the top as well and from this perspective it's pretty easy to tell that yes the crankshaft is bent and we can either choose to bend it back into shape or better yet replace it but here's where it gets really gruesome so if you're squeamish you might want to look away now with the break off we now get to see just how much play there really is in the crankshaft and it's bad in fact it's much worse than I can ever imagine now for this to happen to the mower not only did the blade have to hit something really hard they must have been running with the mower because this sort of damage doesn't just happen from hitting something hard that had to be moving quite fast towards the object and for those of you who didn't know it we do have a witness to the crime and it can be seen by looking at the pressed and key on the body of the adapter now it's hard to tell from the outside of the adapter but if you look on the inside where the crankshaft goes you should see the key extend into this area however as you can see the key does not extend into this area and it's almost flush with the rest of the metal so what's happened here is that the blade and the adapter has turned in relation to the crankshaft and that's caused the key to be pushed out of the keyway you can also tell that one edge of the keyway does have some damage to it because it doesn't look like the other side well that pretty much tells me something terrible has happened to this end that not only took out the blade adapter but also bent the crankshaft that means I now need to look inside the engine and see what else might have been damaged by this tragic event now after getting all the bolts out of the sump I'll then just give it a love tap for Mr Hammer which surprisingly gives way a little bit too easily which is not a good thing after getting the sump off the engine it's pretty clear that the crank seal has been damaged and very badly in fact it almost looks like it's been done on purpose as though someone shoved a screwdriver through it to sabotage it but it's much worse than just a badly broken seal in fact I was so transfixed by the broken seal that I didn't realize the damage to the sump itself as you can tell a good portion of the lower support is broken and gone first how does this happen and secondly where's the rest of it so I can answer the second question pretty easily do you remember that love tap that I gave with Mr Hammer to the sump to loosen it well that apparently broke this part of the sump and the reason I can tell that is because of where the pieces ended up at but there's a problem I've used the same hammer on a lot of different engines and in the same manner and I've never broken any one of them until now that's because if you noticed in some of the other shots there was already a crack in the sump from when they hit whatever it was that stopped the engine in fact it was cracked so badly that allowed the crank to have a lot more play in it which also damaged the crankshaft seal I almost have to wonder if all that dirt and oil that I cleaned off the top of the mowing deck was from a different oil leak because this oil leak would not be seen instead all the oil would have been coming from the bottom of the engine instead but the bigger question is how much is it going to cost me to fix this so the items I need to replace are the sump the crankshaft the oil seal gaskets and of course the blade adapter now if I bought the parts new the price after taxes would be more than 210 dollars which is very close to the price of a new engine but if I were to buy the parts used the price would be half as much but I still have to buy a blade adapter for either choice so here's the problem I don't have an issue with spending a lot of time on a project like this one it's a hobby and this is where the enjoyment comes from but what I don't like seeing is money coming out of my wallet that I can never get back so this project may not be worth it because of the high price for parts that means I'm gonna have to consider my options like I've never had to before so my question is what would you do if you were in this situation would you spend the money to fix it buy a new engine install a used engine or just use this mower for parts instead 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: Home Garage

Views: 9,192

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: 1Jaq8QkMUsU

Length: 13min 15sec (795 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 23 2023