The self-propelled mowers with longer cranks for the drive-pulley are especially vulnerable to hitting stumps and other immoveable objects.
Most of the non-starting issues i've experienced are from the tiny jet clogging in the float-bowl mounting bolt.
Most of my small engines came with (or I added) fuel shut-offs so I can run-out / burn off the gas in the carb after every use, just in case I'm not certain how soon I'll be using it again.
One reason my Sachs-powered 1978 Wards Imperial moped is still running on it's original carb!

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DrDKW

Anyone looking for a connecting rod ( std) for a Kohler KT17 PM me. I They are NLA. Kohler is scheduled to make one more production run and then destroy the molds. My local dealer has ONE remaining in stock. He had two, before i scarfed up the one I needed.

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1982 300SD " Wotan" ..On the road as of Jan 8, 2007 with Historic Tags

There are manual reel mowers. Then again there are other reel mowers. A good one is scarce and far easier to use than many that are almost junk in comparison. The best by far would now be older in my opinion.

As for gas powered lawn stuff I just weight the cost per year has been and decide if it is worth doing more maintenance on it. Usually there are many things on them that are on their way out after ten years or so. Tires are rotting etc.

If one of our lawn tractors dies now it has cost 40.00 per operational amortized year if we call it junk now.

The other one would be in the 50-60 per year range at this point but other than needing a new deck belt and getting a little steering play is still in good shape.

Logically it would be better to sell off the cheaper one as it is still quite usable whille there is still some value left in it. We have pretty large lawn areas to cut as well. Not really that large but each lot is one acre. Both have elevation issues and are not like cutting a billiard table.

My prefferance is to run heavy duty 40 to fifty oil in the lawn tractors air cooled engines. I have never observed one of my engines getting tired over time with this approach. This with many lawn tractors involved over the years as well.

I did have a struggle to find straight 40 grade and 50 grade this fall for the pre storage oil changes. It seems to have been removed from the shelves of all the normal local sources. So since I will use nothing else I will have to locate some.

How much/ how long do you actually mow grass in Nova Scotia?

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1982 300SD " Wotan" ..On the road as of Jan 8, 2007 with Historic Tags

the bolt holding the bowl doubles as the jet as well.

if i were you, i would do this.....

turn the mower on its side with the carb up. unbolt the bolt (1/2") and clean it thoroughly.

There are 4 holes on that bolt. 3 are obvious and one is really really small. the small hole is located at the top end of the threads. it is so small it is easy to miss.

i recommend you use one strand of wire from a wire brush and ream all the holes out, blast it with carb cleaner then blast it with air.

fyi- when you prime it and then it runs and dies is a symptom of the motor not sucking up fuel on its own i.e. it just runs on the primer bulb fuel.

there is a carb rebuild kit you can get for those carbs. it comes with a bowl gasket, needle and float. let me know if you need it, i can send you one.

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Ben
1987 190d 2.5Turbo

Well yesterday at the cottage and at least once more I suspect in two weeks. The temperature has to drop and remain below 50F I understand to totally stop growth. . Growth has slowed already. Late spring to early fall it has to be done once a week. The original surveys done by explorers considered Nova Scotia to be primarily a good pasture land.

Average grass cutting period is perhaps six months . Air conditioning of homes is not an absolute necessity. There is never a night you cannot comforatably sleep. The cars air conditioning perhaps is used a dozen days a year.

I do not think we get as cold as Maine to the south of us for some reason. Being surrounded by the ocean almost totally in combination with the gulf stream currernt just offshore may provide the answers. Out at the beach our waters are the warmest north of the carolinas.

We are getting some reports of great white sharks on one side of nova scotia now. Used to be only about once every five years even one was seen and identified. The incidence of sightings of them is getting more frequent and numerous. There has never been a death attributed to shark attacks here as far as I can tell. I hope this does not change. As a general guess if you took July and August out of your area you probably would duplicate our summer. The ground freezes at about the end of december now and thaws maybe about the end of February. This year was too dry for local farmers. This they seldom experience so things may be changing or it is just an odd year.

I spent a very agreeable week in Nova Scotia camping with my family about 15 years ago. Actually happened to be in Antigonish (?) when the Highland Games were being held there. Then up to Badeck, and around the Cabot Trail. I was struck by all the little maritime museums in every little coastal town. We stopped by the college where Scotish Arts and lore were taught. They even made me a tie of the tartan that I am allowed to wear. Also surprised by the amount of Titanic debris until I realized how close the sinking was to the coast of NS. Also impressive were the cords upon cords of firewood lining driveways from house to street. Winter evidently occupies the mind a lot--for good reason.

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1982 300SD " Wotan" ..On the road as of Jan 8, 2007 with Historic Tags

I believe a high percentage of the maritime population still burn wood. At least outside the towns and cities. We burn it in a wood add on furnace. Cost is now two hiundred a cord if you buy it cut and split and delivered as we do.

If you have the time to work at it somehow yourself you can reduce the price substantially. We burn about 4.5 cords a winter to heat about 2000-2200 square feet. The oil furnace is not used unless we have to go away.

Oil costs about a thousand dollars for 200 gallons in the last few years. If your wood heating unit is reasonably efficient it takes about two cords to equal 200 gallons of heating oil.

Wood heating tends to be more constant in nature and about half price or less. It may even be cheaper or no costlier to heat electrically over an oil furnace system today.

The last house I built has an interesting heating arrangement. You pay 3k up front. This gets you a computorized heat storage unit including installation with all sensors for the on board computor etc. It recharges every night and all of the weekends with 1/2 price electricity if needed. discharging only on demand. During the cheap charging times the rest of the house is also on 1/2 price hydro. I also incorporated a larger water heater that is blocked from heating except in cheap times.

You also can get the 1/2 price power if the electrical system network is in other additional periods of low draw. The hydro controls the time of cheaper electricity to the dwellings so equiped with radio signals. They do not push or advertise this program but it made sense to me. This may well be the cheapest overall solution to space heating.

We use totally hidden from the roadside solar panels to heat the attached 1000 square foot garage at our own house. There is two hundred square feet of exposure surface with them' They feed the radiant heat in the garage floor. It takes about three days of no sun to make a substantial drop of temperature out there as the garage is so well insulated. Perhaps dropping from 90 degrees to 60 degrees. We actually could detour some of that heat to other uses if we wished. Things are just not tight enough to consider it. I poured the floor a little thicker than normal over a good insulating base as an increased storage medium. That system has been running thirty years now. We build few slab on grade houses up here or I would have used it more.

I too originally visited this area on vacation several times before we made the decision to locate permanently here.

Cape Briton has continued to lose industry over the resultant time since you were here. A large paper mill is closing up this year for example. Where we reside is neither growing or declining. New bruinswick next door seems to be more progressive curently.

This area was poor until transfer payments were initiated perhaps 40 years ago. This is where wealthier provinces contributed to poorer ones. That policy worked well up till now in my opinion. Now some of the wealthier provinces are complaining our populations are far better off than theirs.

I was suprised by many things when we arrived here. People did not have morgages generally on their homes. Rent to buy with no interest was the convention if you did not have enough cash apparently. Property and homes were dirt cheap. No real estate companies for all practical purposes existed to distort the local market. It was just local convention to save a good portion of your income. There was so much less government and self interested commercial intervention than in central Canada it was a different world. The strangest thing to me was there was just no immigration to here then and now. Although in recent years we do import mexican nationals temporarily to do a lot of jobs that cannot be filled locally.

The man manipulated devices of so called progress where just not here then either. They are getting here now in spades and are wrecking a good previous system . Fortunatly we still have no pressures in comparison to what the larger canadian cities have to bear now.

In my opinion formed over time the local population does not generally use credit and most have sizable liquidity in comparison to most canadians.. I attribute this to most locals not living at or anywhere near the level of their incomes. This may no longer apply to the youngest generation just getting started in life locally. The traps we tend to and have engineered into our systems with time are going to take their toll on them..

This area is certainly not utopia but is somewhat unique in north america in my opinion. Maine to the south of us is now much poorer in comparison. An american is in the process of investing about ten million locally in the last few weeks. Not a lot of money by any stretch today. Still he must have seen something he liked here. We understand it is to be a large chicken producing enterprise with a decent airstrip. He paid 3.1 million for the basic land we understand. The buildings are now being errected.

I think a larger percentage of our older canadians spend their winters in the south now than any other part of Canada on a per capita basis. We cannot get away ourselves because of other commitments that require our local presence. Other than a week or two at best and even that is difficult. Retirement age seems to also be declining rapidly. Most are off the treadmill at sixty and many at even earlier ages.

Remember no health care costs or coverages to be concerned about. Minumin retirement income is higher than absolutly needed locally.Retired people get the same pension dollars as in the far more expensive areas of Canada. Property taxes and insurances are not bad but tending to be forced and manipulated upwards now. The people in general still remain friendly and there is a broad form of the sense of community present.

^^^^ This message provided by CANADA TOURISM.

What a nice presentation---almost makes me want to relocate there....almost.

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1982 300SD " Wotan" ..On the road as of Jan 8, 2007 with Historic Tags

It sucks fuel through that nut/jet that holds the bowl on. Should be a couple small orfices on the side of the jet plus one in the center. Shoot it out with carb cleaner down the center and juice should pop out the sides then hi press air.Should idle then. The gasket seal on the bowl is critical for sealing as the primer when pushed puts air press in the bowl which forces gas through the carb into the intake manifold. Bad seal it won't prime.

Come on folks! This is not rocket science. If you forgot to put anything in the fuel last fall to keep it from turning to goo, just slip the carb apart and clean it out with carb cleaner! Geesh!

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2001 SLK 320 six speed manual
2014 Porsche Cayenne six speed manual

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