Posts Tagged ‘cleaning mower deck’
Distorted Perspective
If it wasn’t so indescribable and unrecognizable, this would have been a candidate for my image-guessing game.
What the heck is that? It’s not The Bean (Cloud Gate) in Chicago but it could be a close cousin located at the Big Stone Sculpture Garden.
I like how the zoomed-in square photo has a hint of a snow-globe vibe. I don’t know that the sculpture is recognizable from that close view, except maybe to someone who just visited the site in the last few days. Even then, I’m not sure what the official description is for this wavy-shaped, mirrored blob that would appropriately identify it.
It made for a good blog post subject though. Entertainment for the eyes.
Not to mention it served me well since I didn’t take any pictures of the horses getting their hooves trimmed yesterday. It was not an easy day for the farrier, Heather, because the horses –more specifically, the chestnuts, Mia, and Light– were more skittish than usual and were not cooperative at all about standing on three legs for any span of time.
Their equine “pedicure” was somewhat truncated. Functionally sound, but cosmetically rough looking.
The other thing I didn’t take a picture of was my solution for getting the zero-turn tractor tipped up so I could clean out the bottom of the mower deck. After surfing through images of ramps for lifting cars that I was considering buying to lift the tractor, I thought up a way to do it with material I already had on hand.
There was an old deck board on the floor in the shop garage that I cut in two and propped up on the loader bucket of the diesel tractor parked right there. I screwed a couple of scrap chunks of 2×4 on each board to lock them in position on the bucket. It resulted in enough angle that I can lay beneath it and have reasonable access to the entirety of the 42-inch deck.
It also gave me a good view of the poor condition of the mower blades. I’m afraid the amount of rocks and sticks I hit this year while learning to steer with two levers has shortened the life of the blades considerably. I don’t feel bad about it. I knew what I’d gotten myself into and consider it a cost for not getting the driveway shoulders finished yet.
I hope to remedy that before fall is over, but maybe I’m revealing a bit of my own distorted perspective about the possibility. The landscaper we are waiting on does not have a strong track record of showing up in a timely fashion, or sometimes, responding to us at all.
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That Guy
I don’t think I’m that guy, but Cyndie says I might be. One of the reasons I have historically eschewed gas-powered equipment comes from the demands of maintaining the machines. If a device is electric, and all I need to do is turn it on to use it and back off when I’m done, that would suit me just fine. Maybe change the brushes if you keep it long enough, or take care of the batteries if it’s got ’em, but that’s about it.
It’s all the stinky gasoline, oil, air filters, fuel filters, and spark plugs of gas-powered engines that weighs on me. I don’t want to deal with them, so I wait. But how long can I get away with avoiding it without suffering performance problems? I prefer to have my machines functioning at their peak.
After putting our Craftsman lawn tractor through rather rough use, and suffering the consequences of a frustrating degradation in performance, I’ve adjusted my attitude about the machine.
Ironically, this ends up being less about the gas engine and more about the general use of the machine as a lawn mower. I really did use the thing with reckless abandon, mowing over rocks and sticks, heading down our rustic trails and over sharp drop offs, sometimes into wet areas where there was standing water.
The mower responded accordingly, bending and breaking when limits were exceeded.
I figured it was a piece of crap and that I should look into getting a heavy-duty commercial grade machine that could take such abuse. A mechanic at my favorite hardware store helped me to see it otherwise.
We already own a power trimmer. I should be using that appliance in all the afore-mentioned rough areas. My lawn mower is designed to cut lawn grass. If I use it as designed, it will do the job well.
In the past, when I finished driving the mower through all the abuse, I parked it and walked away, glad to be done with that nuisance of a chore. I was aware that grass would collect and build up under the mower deck, but it was hard to access, so I saved it for some other time.
I was tired, and the mowing was done. The last thing I wanted to do was mess with the job of clean up.
I wasn’t that guy.
Well, not entirely. Not yet, anyway.
Maybe I’m getting closer. Yesterday, Anneliese saw me cleaning the mower deck and asked if it had gotten plugged. That made total sense to my old way of thinking. You clean it when it stops working well.
Not any more.
No, it wasn’t plugged. Since the informative visit with the mechanic who gladly sells me products and services, I have changed my methods. I pull off the deck after each mowing, flip it over, and clean out the accumulated gunk, before the mower ever gets even close to plugging.
The same as the way that guy would do it.
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Relative Something 