Grass Cutting Season Is About Here

As most of you know I take care of mowing and weed eating the three acres at my BIL James place. Of course he provides the big lawnmower I use to cut the grass. It’s getting that time again where I will resume cutting the grass around here. I first needed to do the annual oil and lube maintenance, sharpen the blades and get it ready.

This will be the fourth cutting season for me using his 48" cut Scag Lawnmower with a 19hp engine. Also this will be the fourth tension spring I've had to replace for the right cutting blade. What gives here is the spring made in China or is their a flaw perhaps in the design? So, after discussing  this with James we decided we would  approach the dealer.  The prior two times I just went in and purchased a replacement and the first time they replaced it under warranty. This time we decided enough is enough and I would go in there with the story of replacing this spring for the fourth time and would ask if this was a fault in the design or perhaps poor quality of the spring.

Today I went in to the parts counter and looked the parts guy strait in the eye and told him about our having to replace this spring for the fourth time. I then asked him has he had other customers coming in with a similar complaint. He looked me strait in the eye and said yes. I thought to myself "got ya" and was preparing to ask for it to be replaced at no cost. But then he followed up and said the breakage is usually caused by running the engine rpm at to low of a speed which in turns creates a huge amount of strain on the blade trying to exhaust the grass. This strain also is put on the tension spring and in turn it breaks over a period of time.

I thought there a minute about my mowing habits and said to myself he is right. I don' t run the rpm up at full bore when cutting and just about every time the spring had broken it would be when mowing in tall grass and particularly when cutting into rows of cut grass is when I would notice the spring breaking. So, I quickly asked him if he could help out a guy whose habits were exactly as he described. The guy was nice enough that he gave me 25% off the regular price. We will give it a test in future mowing's to see if running at the higher rpm will resolve the problem.

Until next time. . . .MtnAire Travlers.