World's Smallest 30" Riding Mower Won't Start (and it was free)

a free lawnmower what could possibly go wrong well it doesn't work so in this video there's going to take you through the very simple basic steps to try and diagnose these machines they're not very difficult or complicated they're very basic and they serve a purpose as a nice little mower in uh in a yard if this is the right machine for you and you're having issues with it then this video is for you let's get into it here we go so this is aaron the editor's lawnmower it was given to him by a relative and it hasn't ran in quite a while now there's a few things that if you're getting a free lawnmower you should expect to pay um if it's been sitting for a while uh you're probably gonna have some fuel issues the battery's likely gonna be dead and you should do a service to it spark plug oil change things like that now this i think this is troy built and available in canadian tire home depot things like that perfect for a little subdivision home great to hold the kid in one hand and drive and enjoy the tractor life but it's frustrating when it doesn't want to start so first things first is we need to have a good battery luckily somebody stole the battery out of this one already so we replaced the battery um the battery uh if you can't find it um look for red one and black wire and it's tucked down below it's hard to find the battery when it isn't with the machine so just keep that in mind don't start ripping plastics off and and trying to find a battery when there is just no battery so we've got a battery in place um but now it won't it won't turn over um lights don't come on uh the hazards and it won't turn over now these things are very meticulous for safeties you want to make sure that it's in park so foot all the way down there's a lever on the right that does the speeds make sure that's down into the p every one of them will have a seat sensor on it meaning that as soon as you get off the seat it won't start either that's so that you don't cut your toes off when you're cutting your grass in your flip-flops so that being said when you turn your deck on there's also a switch to make sure that the deck isn't running when you get off uh some of them will let you get off with it running but if the deck is engaged it won't let you start it that way either so every one of these switches basically it just connects two wires together if it's open it means that the power from the key has to go through all the switches and all of them have to be connected to make it to the starter if it's open like this it's like cutting the wire in half and it won't start so what got me on this one is that there is also a safety on the cover now this is the first time i've seen this while we were moving it into the trailer we stepped on this and we jumped this plastic piece on this sensor so it was actually this sensor that wasn't connected if you see that it was just on top because somebody stood on it here so over the winter that's more than likely to happen as you're getting the snow blower and putting your bikes and stuff away so put that back in place tighten this and see if it turns over now um before it starts turning over it's up to you if you want to do a spark plug change and an oil change or whatnot but um these are also very inexpensive in the fact that they are basically a throwaway mower so you can start throwing money into it but if there's a major issue that money's kind of gone so for a unit like this i wouldn't hesitate to try and start it and make sure that it runs and if it runs then do the oil change and do the spark plug that being said you do want to make sure that there's oil in it so every one of them's got a dipstick and you want to have the the oil up to the cross hairs there it being air-cooled there is no coolant so this is really the only fluid that you need to check so it's got oil in it it should crank over but no start the mower needs three things to run it needs fuel air and spark so the cover there's two little screws on the back here underneath on this one take those out and then the clips go in you can get at more of the engine here this one is a 420 cc overhead valve and your air filter is right here this would be your pre-filter this is a little screen that catches all of the the fluff and the grass and then underneath here is your carburetor so the carburetor's only job is to take the fuel mix it with the air and put it into the engine spark plug is right over here let's get out that we'll just take these two bolts out we can get at this so we'll pull that you can do it there we go so spark plug is underneath there spark plugs are usually one of two sizes 5 8 smaller one 13 16 is the bigger one i think this is the bigger one spark plug looks good edges are nice and sharp for the electrode now is a good time to replace it but before we do that we'll check if we have spark now there's a couple ways to do this if you have uh a buddy in the garage with you and some of you are drinking beer just get him to hold the spark plug and crank it over what you want to see is a little spark that goes between the tip and here between the electrode and the tip but in the daytime it's really hard to see so if you're if a buddy's holding on to it uh he'll definitely feel it even if he doesn't see it but because aaron knows this trick what we can do is find a ground hopefully that bolt is properly grounded turn it over okay so you see the spark i can feel a little bit through my finger so it's it will be a better spark when there's a when there's a proper ground so we'll throw this back in for now the number is f6 rtc air so you can go ahead and order that so we've got spark more than likely we've got air because now we're open so it must be a fuel issue so if the fuel is old it loses its volatility and doesn't spark as good usually that's not the problem the problem is usually the ethanol that's in our fuel we're in ontario canada it might be different in the states but we have 15 ethanol in our 87 octane so if your lawn isn't that big and you're not spending hundreds of dollars on fuel a year opt for the premium because it doesn't have ethanol in it and your fuel won't go all gummy like the ethanol does so we want to check the fuel this is full of the top it still smells like fuel you could opt to drain it here a lot of these tanks don't have a shut off on it so if you follow it out usually there's something that looks like this which is your filter you can pop this off drain it into a pail use it to start a campfire or throw it in your car it'll mix with rest the fuel and it'll still burn if it's clean um but this fuel is clean we're gonna assume that this fuel is clean what we need to do is check for flow now um this is a very small machine but also very dangerous seen a lot of shops and garages and houses catch fire because you start working with the fuel you spill a little bit of fuel it lays down um your maybe you want to pour feel the need to pour a little bit of fuel down the carburetor it backfires it lights up there's there's dead grass all the way around to just heed the warning that you need to be cautious with the fuel and i'm not joking around that it goes very very quick it's all plastic it melts and it catches fire and you literally a minute and she's done for so fire extinguisher close by do it outside just be careful so what we're going to do is check and make sure that we've got fuel running out of here and then we're going to follow that along so basically the fuel comes out of the tank goes through a filter so you can check it before the filter and after the filter if you have good flow before the filter but not after change your filter if you've got good fuel coming out of the filter then it's making its way to the carburetor if it is not making it to the carburetor um this one has an electronic shut off on it this little solenoid right here is right behind this cover take a couple bolts off we can pull this cover off this little guy is an on off to quickly shut the machine off and it's usually tied to all of the safeties so we need to make sure that you got 12 volts to this plug right here and that the other wire is properly grounded and that this switch works now you can take this out um spin this right out using a half this one uses a half inch wrench you can spin this out disconnect the wires first because you don't want to twirl them up and pull the wires out but if you spin this out you can turn the key on and and see if this pin goes in or stays put now what can happen is the ethanol gums that up and then it just stays closed so we'll start at the front and then work our way back and see what's going on with this little girl okay fuel shut off if you've got proper pliers uh they work as well but for the average person two washers and a pair of vice grips works pinch this off check it by the filter if your lines are cracked at all or dry reflect and don't flex like this you're going to want to replace those so see if we got some flow oh we got good flow so our filter is nice and clear that's the best we could hope for we can put that back now don't leave cups of fuel laying around they get knocked over um and don't leave it in a timmy's cup because you might accidentally take a little swig too so you don't want to do that either all right so now we can put our our clamps after the filter and we'll pull this little solenoid off first we'll check with a voltmeter we'll make sure that we have 12 volts to this little wire which is what tells it to turn on okay so we've got 13 volts there so that means that i had my battery on a charger for a while and that that wire has 12 volts so we can take the ground off and see about pulling that solenoid i've got the fuel pinched off so looks like somebody recently probably about two hours ago scraped all the carbon off of this and now this moves nice and freely spring out and when you give a power return so let's see if that works plug that lighter back in again and just touch it to ground that's what you want it to do so that's working so that is not the issue now turn the key off make sure that there's no power now we'll open this up and see if there's any fuel that comes out of there that means we've got fuel going all the way through and coming out the carburetor here no fuel so we have an issue between here and here the fuel should be going through there now and coming out of here we need to pull this carburetor off another thing you can do before you do that is you can pull this this plug out right here and fuel should come out and that's a drain now you should do that at the end of the season so there's not old stale fuel in the carburetor itself that would keep it from gumming up that's another telltale sign that you're getting fuel all the way to there so um now before i pull the carburetor off i was going to try one more thing sometimes when you choke it extra hard you can get it running meaning that you put your hand on it or a piece of cardboard we'll try that that will that will choke it off more what happens is the engine creates such a high vacuum because it's a piston coming down trying to pull in air it'll pull whatever because there's such a high vacuum it'll still pull some fuel through um uh that'll tell you that okay at least the engine is running and that it's a fueling issue just to confirm that so put this back on again this is working the way it should don't forget the little seal if there's a little washer laying around the washers back on screw it back in i'll just plug that back in again okay try cranking it over and adding a little extra chokes piece of cardboard works clipboard piece of wood [Applause] that's a good sign so i did fire that's our spark see how it's running and it's running on just that little bit of air and now when i slide that back it's not enough to pull fuel through anymore so i know that the engine at least will run poorly if you want to be brave you can take a little bit of fuel and pour it down the carburetor um just little bits a little squirt bottle just realize that that's extremely flammable and dangerous um and i know that it will run on that but that's not gonna solve our issues so we're gonna pull the card all right two bolts here and then one nut right here 10 millimeter and 12 millimeter you can lift that up and we can just slide this up and out of the way carefully and then we can get out our carburetor be careful with your gaskets put them in a safe place you can reuse them nothing wrong with reusing the the gaskets although you can buy new ones if you so desire now two little springs right now is a good time to take a camera and take a couple pictures of exactly how everything went together what position these blades are in so that nothing's flipped or turned everything is in proportion take a video and scan nicely around with your phone that way you get all the different angles in case you forget or don't know or don't understand how something goes back together again that is your best friend all right slide that off we'll disconnect the [Music] linkages because it goes down and then over you need to have to like pry it up that way be a little aggressive what i mean and then that's fine you can just bend that back after you're done [Music] slide that off good thing the tire's flat pop our fuel line off making sure that it's still pinched off [Music] okay let's tear into this thing all right so basic function of your carburetor we've done this in other videos but we'll do a quick recap fuel comes in through here and it fills your fuel bowl the main passage is blocked off by a shutoff in this case some of them have something manual you can turn to shut it off in this case it's electronic we've figured out that there is no fuel flow between here and here so we're going to take it apart now this is called your fuel bowl what happens is your fuel comes in and fills up this bowl now in there is a needle and a seat and a float so as the float comes up it pushes up against the needle and it closes the seat and that is a passageway between the float bowl and this jet right here so when you're when your float is down it means that there's fuel able to flow and fill the bowl but you don't want to fill too much because otherwise it will run in and start flooding out your engine so the way to control it is to monitor that with a float this is your main jet this is where your fuel needs to be coming out of so as your air is rushing past your two throttle plates it creates a bit of a vacuum or negative pressure and it'll pull fuel up into it and into your engine now your first plate is your choke what happens when you first start it is you want to pull on your choke and what it does is close this plate off and what that does is increase the vacuum in the engine which will pull extra fuel through that jet when i was covering the main intake for the carburetor through the air filter i was closing off 99 of it whereas this still only covers maybe 85 that 99 creates enough vacuum that sometimes you can get it to start that's handy for first starts in the spring when you've got some old stale fuel in here maybe and it just doesn't want to ignite as good and then the rest of the season you're okay to just work off of your uh your plate on the other side of that is your throttle main throttle blade this is what it looks like at an idle and this is what it looks like at full throttle when you want to get the grass down and go in and have a couple beers you want to make sure that these are never left loose because if these fall into an engine you might as well just buy a new lawnmower that being said we have an issue between here and here so let's pull this fuel bowl off and see what we can see there is your float and pull that off like that and pull this out and that did not want to come out so you see how dirty this is this is all gummy from the ethanol i actually had to pry this out it should fall out it should definitely fall out so the fuel fills up this bowl but it gets picked up from this little tube right here which sits in the middle of this and it needs this plunger to come back and allow fuel to go through this little hole here up into here and then into your engine here so without fuel coming out of here we still don't have fuel coming out of here so the fuel bowl was dry so what what all that happened was this needle got stuck in here even though the float was down it didn't allow fuel to go into this bowl in the first place you can see how dry that is so once we open this up the fuel bowl will fill up we know that our plunger goes in that allows the fuel to come into this little hole here where it gets siphoned up by this tube goes through this jet comes out here and goes into the engine our issue was that this needle and seat was jammed tight in here and was not allowing the fuel to flow into the fuel bowl we'll clean this up we we cleaned off the needle we'll make sure that this passage is open we'll make sure that this passage is open when we pull this back out again and we will have a running engine here we go now you can also bring these carburetors away as it sits and they have these ultrasonic cleaners they work really good as well as normal we're working late at night and everybody's closed so we'll just try and clean [Music] ourselves [Music] okay so now these you can just look through them and make sure that you see the light the light is what you want to see now if you can see this one there's a tiny bit of crud in this one that little bit is enough to give you grievances that's the difference between two hours of cutting the grass and an hour and 40 minutes so it's all about efficiency that's two old beers that you're missing out on perfect you can feel the air coming out of here so that one's open that's good that part of it is done [Music] it's so gross these are dentist picks and they work amazing and they what happens is the the shoulders get thin as they scrape people's teeth so they have to throw them away but if you ask politely say can i have some of these those old picks generally they let you go and they're they're got flat tips and pointy tips and just don't poke yourself with them because you got gingivitis in your hand but they work awesome for this stuff i had a girl break up with me because i told her that she was a nurse and mechanics and nurses basically do the same job except they have it easier because the nurse or the patient tells a nurse exactly what hurts we have to figure it out from a mute um patient and she kind of felt offended by that and didn't work out but i'm a dentist and a nurse and a doctor and a mechanic and a plumber and electrician so you can suck it then you want that falling out that uh that's what you want so we can pop that back in again there's a little spring here somewhere was at one point there it is yeah don't blow all your parts across the shop that's also very important i can go back on so we can see this in action now if you can see that going up and down that's what's supposed to happen but we'll put the fuel in there you can blow in here if you've got a clean tube you can blow in there and push on it it should stop the flow when you open it it should go past this is honestly why she broke up with me i kept doing my lips kept tasting with gas that's what you want so you can hook the fuel line up there and then play with this and see if the fuel comes out i know that it's fixed it's getting late i'm going to put it back together again i'm just going to take this out quick and blow that clean and then we should be good [Music] you basically have to hook your linkage back up the way it was but aaron's like directly in my light so there's a little one there we go spring back in so small it is easier if you take it out from the other side [Music] okay um that should allow fuel through so we should be able to take this out and then turn the key on and see if fuel starts coming out of there okay we got fuel coming out of there put the rest of it back together again and it should fire up [Music] do here we go all right we stop the video there there's not much anything to do if you got some wd-40 spray anything that moves steering anything that squeaks shoot it down in there it doesn't hurt um flat tires just put the gunk in there uh it'll leak in small spots around the rim um what you do is deflate the tire put the gunk in there inflate it that the gunk kind of fills all the little spots that are leaking and your tires are good to go take your blades off um and then sharpen them very straightforward lots of videos on that other than that make sure that your belts are in good shape maybe have one on hand if you can read a number on a belt write it down keep it somewhere so if you run into a belt issue you can take care of that then pressure wash it maintain it and uh change your own spark plug and you've got a nice running machine again so um generally if it won't start in the spring you're gonna have to do basically what i did and run premium fuel because there's no ethanol in it so thanks for watching guys we've got lots of other videos how to's uh equipment reviews everything else on the channel we also have another channel where we build cool stuff we've got uh ls swap mercedes gto's lots of cool stuff going on so thanks for watching uh remember you can do this yourself be careful especially around fuel um and have some fun doing it remember if you're not filthy you're not rich because you have to pay somebody else to do this and you're never gonna get ahead so here we go

Channel: DGHD

Views: 109,746

Keywords: deboss garage, troy bilt lawn mower, troy bilt lawn mower wont start, cub cadet mower wont start, craftsman mower, craftsman mower wont start, troy bilt neighborhood rider, troy bilt neighborhood lawn mower, tb30r mower, cc30h cub cadet, cc30, columbia cr30, craftsman r110, riding mower, riding lawn mower, mtd mower wont start, powermore ohv engine

Id: n0t6TzihdEw

Length: 27min 18sec (1638 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 15 2021