Dear Wally #47 lawn mower blues

Lawn Mower Blues

Dear Wally:
It’s lawn cutting time again and we’re trying to squeeze another season out of our aging ride–on lawn tractor. It’s actually only 4 years old and we got it at Home Depot. When you first start it, it seems so co-operative and willing. It initially mows well and goes up pretty decent inclines. But after about 20 minutes it starts smoking a lot and begins to smell like delicious frying bacon. It also then refuses to go up any incline and groans/ lurches slowly as you head up a hill. If we don’t return it to the garage before 20 minutes, it stops right there and we’re walking home until at least a day later. We can’t afford a new tractor now plus we feel like we owe it to this tractor (part of the family after 3 years after all ) to try and fix her up. What should we do?
Strapped in Stone Ridge.

Dear Strapped:
I have that same mower! (or at least my mower has those same problems) Seriously, that John Deere looked so fine on the showroom floor. So proud. It looked like it would never let me down- like I could hop on it and cut a 48” path from the Hudson Valley to the Napa valley without so much as a backfire. I even dreamt of entering it in mini-class tractor pulls and letting my daughter take it to the prom in 18 years.
When on a tractor, even if a lawn tractor, I feel a swelling sense of camaraderie with my Midwestern farmer-brethren who are out there day in, day out hauling heavy disc harrows with their 140hp Green Deere machines and tilling the soil so the rest of America can eat. I take this tractor business seriously, you know.
My machine gave me 3 good years before the wheels started coming off (literally and figuratively). It’s not clear that the disintegration of my mower is a design flaw, a function of lightweight, JV parts, or simply an application over-abuse. (Shouldn’t have tried to jump 3 Greyhound busses with it last year!) I’m sure cunning legal minds could easily argue all the angles. I just know this: 4 years in lawn tractor years in the care custody and comfort of a typical weekend warrior homeowner is equivalent to 100 years in human years (the last 50 of which are spend on a prison labor chain gang busting rocks in the hot sun). So you are essentially sitting on a felonious grandma’s back, pulling on her ponytail and expecting her to haul your rear end up and down a hill (which might just have happened everyday in the joint anyway). I don’t care how much yogurt she eats, or how many squat thrusts she does each morning. She (or anyone) is gonna start smelling like cooking bacon after that kind of exertion. It’s because we bought low end models, I’m both proud and embarrassed to admit. And there are a lot of us out there, evidently.
The billowing white smoke after 20 minutes (you didn’t use those adjectives but may I take that liberty because this has been my observation) is cause for real concern. Is this insulting that I suggest you check the oil before each use? I hope not and hope you accept my apologies if this sounds patronizing. Running an engine with no oil seems to present in a similar fashion- smoky puffs of protest as unlubricated metal grinds against more unlubricated metal in a molten fire chamber. I know dealing with engine oil seems like such an annoyance sometimes. I hear you. But they have a dipstick for a reason and it would behoove you to check the level every so often. If you pull out the dipstick and there is no oil, which I suspect, much will be explained. Just add some and deny having never checked it before.
So she only creeps up a hill after a while? This might be related to the oil, which I will safely assume is non-existent. Whatever residue of oil stubbornly lingers in the crankcase when you start out the day might just be leaking onto the drive belt below. This would certainly cause the belt to slip as it gets warm and expands by causing the rear axel pulley to slip.
The bacon you are smelling? That’s the sound of money cooking, my friend Your money. Start saving for a new riding mower and meanwhile, just cut the lawn in 20 minute units. Or mortgage the house, buy a big John Deere , turn that lawn into a big old corn field .
Like they say on Car Talk after 45 minutes of jokes at your expense, you probably should take it to a mechanic.
--Good luck and wear goggles.
Wally
Got a question for our columnist or have spare tractor parts he can use for his barely functioning junker? Email him at cwn4@aol.com