A Future With No Small Engines

I am not much of an engine mechanic. I may understand how to do a lot of things but making engines work is not my strong suit. So when the day came a couple weeks ago to do my annual engine maintenance, I wasn't looking forward to it. 

I have four small engines I need to tend. One in the snow blower, lawnmower, tiller and chainsaw. For the snow blower, it is the end of its season so I drain the gas, change the oil and do any adjustments to the business end of the unit. The lawnmower needs an oil and filter change as well as the blade sharpened. The tiller needs an oil change both for the engine and the gearbox. Finally the chainsaw doesn't need any oil changes though I try to run it out of gas and oil when I know it will be sitting unused for a long time.

Part of the reason I hate doing all this is because I have to locate four different manuals, and usually read through them multiple times to get all the pertinent information. For example, in three of the manuals, the amount of oil and the type of oil needed are written on two different pages! On some of them, I have taken to writing this information and page numbers on the covers of the manuals but I haven't yet done it for all of them. 

This year was the first year of maintenance for my lawnmower since I purchased it over winter a year ago. I looked through the manual and of course saw that it needed official John Deere Z530M oil. For those not in the know, that is just the model of the lawnmower and not an oil that is sold. So I drove to the store to find out what type of oil was needed and get an oil filter, but they sold me on their spring maintenance special which was going on right now. They will come pick it up, change all the fluids, sharpen the blades and return it within a week. Since I don't have a good way to sharpen or even jack up the mower to remove the blades, I took them up on it. It did fire right up so I could drive it up from my shed to the driveway. Spend a couple hours charging the battery had certainly crossed my mind but fortunately wasn't needed this time around.

I got the oil changed in the snow blower and tucked it out of the way in the corner of my garage so I can access other things more commonly needed during the summer months like garden hoses and a metal yard wagon which had resided in the same corner all winter long.

The tiller is down at the farm so I bought oil for it and will change it when I go down the next time. Last year I did it on a whipping windy cold day so I hope not to make that mistake again. 

The chainsaw is next though I didn't get to it today. I have a large branch that blew down recently in an area that I mow that I need to cut up and kick down into the ditch. Mostly I just mix up a fresh batch of gas, read the manual on the starting procedure which isn't intuitive but must be followed precisely if one doesn't want to flood out the engine and even then, I still flood it 50% of the time. It is supposed to be 60+ degrees here in two more days so I'm waiting for then to start that project. 

After that, it will all be done for the year. In the late fall, I will do the garage shuffle to get the snow blower accessible and other than airing up the tires, it will be ready to go. I will add some fuel stabilizer to the lawnmower and tiller and park them until next spring and the chainsaw, I just try to empty of fluids, pour any leftover oil mix gas in one of the vehicles to burn and leave the container accessible so I can make a fresh bath of fuel as needed. 

I will then breath a sigh of relief.