Carburetors, C*nts, and Caves
Well I managed to get the damn mower going. But first I shall tell about how I acquired the parts. Firstly, I had to go to Wally World to go buy a new spark plug and air filter. The old air filter was extremely filthy and even though I cleaned it the best I could, I figured it should be replaced. The stupid Wally's near my house closes their outside garden department early (where they keep the lawn mower parts) so I couldn't go on Saturday evening; I had to wait until Sunday. So I get over there Sunday afternoon and get out to the garden department and I almost needed the paramedics to come give me some oxygen and carry me out on a stretcher after the shock I got when I saw the prices. My mower has a Briggs & Stratton engine and the Briggs & Stratton filter for my mower was nearly $7! And if that wasn't bad enough, the damn B & S spark plug was nearly $9! Holy shit, I was hopping mad! $9 for a freakin' spark plug that should cost around $2 and a tiny paper filter with a bit of rubber around the edges almost $7. What an unbelievable rip off!
Man, was I ever pissed off. While I was in there I needed to buy a wiper blade for my car so I headed off to the automotive department. While I was back there I decided to look to see if they had any other brands of spark plugs that might fit my mower. Well, lo and behold! Good old reliable Champion brand had small engine spark plugs for $1.83 for the standard one and $2.64 for the upgraded one. I got one of each (just in case) for WAY less than the B & S one. So the pack of cunts at Briggs & Stratton can kiss my ass with their hyper-inflated prices.
Anyway, by the time I got home from Wally's, it was too late to mess with the mower. (Too late because I had the old woman in tow and she takes for-freakin'-ever while shopping. I didn't actually get around to working on the mower until Monday evening after I brought my mother back home after her doctor appointment.
So I haul the mower upstairs and proceed to replace the spark plug and the air filter. Then I took it outside and primed it and then pulled the start cord and the damn thing fired up and then cut out faster than before I replaced the old parts. SHIT!!! It must be the damn carburetor!
Aaaarrrgggghhhh!!!!!!!!! Now I had to haul the mower back into the house and then go find the manual so I could look at the schematic and see exactly how I was supposed to get to the carburetor. Grrrrrr. The old mower had a Tecumseh engine and the air filter, bowl float and primer bulb were readily accessible on one side of the engine. With this fucking Briggs & Stratton I had to practically disassemble the whole damn thing just to get at the bowl float and carburetor. Well, long story short, the carburetor looked pretty clean but in getting at it I managed to drain quite a lot of gas out of the bowl float. When I put it all back together I took it back outside, primed it, and then pulled the start cord and the thing started up! Yay me!
I didn't want to risk the damn thing cutting off again so I went ahead and started mowing even though I was only wearing flip-flops and shorts and not my usual mowing attire. I managed to do the right-of-way by the street and then I started by the side of the house. There was a fallen palm frond in my way and when I went to pick it up and get it out of the way I let off the throttle a bit and the damn mower cut out. I tried to start the thing back up but it wouldn't start. So freakin' frustrating.
So I had to wheel it back to the car port and let it cool down before I could deal with it again. This time around I figured that I knew where the problem was. It seems that if it gets over primed and the bowl float has too much gas in it then the thing just floods out and won't start. After it cooled down, I had to take the thing apart yet again to get at the bowl float. I loosened the screw at the bottom and drained the gas out into a cup and then tightened the screw back up and put it all back together again. I primed it a few times and pulled the start cord and voila! It started right up and I proceeded to finish mowing the rest of the yard.
When I got to the back of the house I beheld a curious sight. My mother was sitting on her ass right in the dirt in the back yard. I started chuckling to myself as I knew what had happened. She had went out back to water the plants and had managed to trip over the hose and fall down. Since she has bad knees and weighs about 100 kilos she couldn't get herself back up. So I had to spend the next 10 minutes trying to get her back to her feet. I was getting a good chuckle and she was scolding me that it wasn't funny(Well, maybe not for her! LOL). I managed to get her back up but by that time I had already ran out of sunlight since it was nearly 8:30pm so I took the mower back into the house and I'll just have to finish up tomorrow.
Where do caves come in, you ask? Well, I watched a pretty interesting program a while back that showed some place in the NL that had caves and an abandoned quarry that had some cool cave paintings(including dirty graffiti--penis pics and such) and was opened for tours. Well, I couldn't for the life of me remember where the hell that was. Apparently, it's in the Maastricht area. That town has some tunnels under it and after some further searching, I think what I was looking for was the Velvet Cave under the Valkenburg Castle ruins. The whole area is just so damn cool that I'm going to have to add it to my bucket list! Oh! Nearly forgot! The Natural History Museum in Maastricht has a genuine rat king! Definitely a must see.
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***addendum***
For in the eighth day of the seventh month was the wrath of the Great Xul kindled against the c*nts at Briggs & Stratton, and her anger did wax hot. For the Scrolls of Instruction were massively illogical and the scribes thereof needed much ass-kicking as due recompense.
But seriously, that manual was horrible. Instead of an "exploded" diagram which any human with some sense would have had in a user manual these morons at B & S had some stupid parts diagrams in no particular order. Therefore I had to spend much more time than necessary trying to identify the parts(done in simple line drawings). It was difficult to actually identify anything. Then I had to remove four different parts just to get to the carburetor. I'm still annoyed at the whole thing and what an utter rip-off their brand of parts is.
Man, was I ever pissed off. While I was in there I needed to buy a wiper blade for my car so I headed off to the automotive department. While I was back there I decided to look to see if they had any other brands of spark plugs that might fit my mower. Well, lo and behold! Good old reliable Champion brand had small engine spark plugs for $1.83 for the standard one and $2.64 for the upgraded one. I got one of each (just in case) for WAY less than the B & S one. So the pack of cunts at Briggs & Stratton can kiss my ass with their hyper-inflated prices.
Anyway, by the time I got home from Wally's, it was too late to mess with the mower. (Too late because I had the old woman in tow and she takes for-freakin'-ever while shopping. I didn't actually get around to working on the mower until Monday evening after I brought my mother back home after her doctor appointment.
So I haul the mower upstairs and proceed to replace the spark plug and the air filter. Then I took it outside and primed it and then pulled the start cord and the damn thing fired up and then cut out faster than before I replaced the old parts. SHIT!!! It must be the damn carburetor!
Aaaarrrgggghhhh!!!!!!!!! Now I had to haul the mower back into the house and then go find the manual so I could look at the schematic and see exactly how I was supposed to get to the carburetor. Grrrrrr. The old mower had a Tecumseh engine and the air filter, bowl float and primer bulb were readily accessible on one side of the engine. With this fucking Briggs & Stratton I had to practically disassemble the whole damn thing just to get at the bowl float and carburetor. Well, long story short, the carburetor looked pretty clean but in getting at it I managed to drain quite a lot of gas out of the bowl float. When I put it all back together I took it back outside, primed it, and then pulled the start cord and the thing started up! Yay me!
I didn't want to risk the damn thing cutting off again so I went ahead and started mowing even though I was only wearing flip-flops and shorts and not my usual mowing attire. I managed to do the right-of-way by the street and then I started by the side of the house. There was a fallen palm frond in my way and when I went to pick it up and get it out of the way I let off the throttle a bit and the damn mower cut out. I tried to start the thing back up but it wouldn't start. So freakin' frustrating.
So I had to wheel it back to the car port and let it cool down before I could deal with it again. This time around I figured that I knew where the problem was. It seems that if it gets over primed and the bowl float has too much gas in it then the thing just floods out and won't start. After it cooled down, I had to take the thing apart yet again to get at the bowl float. I loosened the screw at the bottom and drained the gas out into a cup and then tightened the screw back up and put it all back together again. I primed it a few times and pulled the start cord and voila! It started right up and I proceeded to finish mowing the rest of the yard.
When I got to the back of the house I beheld a curious sight. My mother was sitting on her ass right in the dirt in the back yard. I started chuckling to myself as I knew what had happened. She had went out back to water the plants and had managed to trip over the hose and fall down. Since she has bad knees and weighs about 100 kilos she couldn't get herself back up. So I had to spend the next 10 minutes trying to get her back to her feet. I was getting a good chuckle and she was scolding me that it wasn't funny(Well, maybe not for her! LOL). I managed to get her back up but by that time I had already ran out of sunlight since it was nearly 8:30pm so I took the mower back into the house and I'll just have to finish up tomorrow.
Where do caves come in, you ask? Well, I watched a pretty interesting program a while back that showed some place in the NL that had caves and an abandoned quarry that had some cool cave paintings(including dirty graffiti--penis pics and such) and was opened for tours. Well, I couldn't for the life of me remember where the hell that was. Apparently, it's in the Maastricht area. That town has some tunnels under it and after some further searching, I think what I was looking for was the Velvet Cave under the Valkenburg Castle ruins. The whole area is just so damn cool that I'm going to have to add it to my bucket list! Oh! Nearly forgot! The Natural History Museum in Maastricht has a genuine rat king! Definitely a must see.
*
*
*
***addendum***
For in the eighth day of the seventh month was the wrath of the Great Xul kindled against the c*nts at Briggs & Stratton, and her anger did wax hot. For the Scrolls of Instruction were massively illogical and the scribes thereof needed much ass-kicking as due recompense.
But seriously, that manual was horrible. Instead of an "exploded" diagram which any human with some sense would have had in a user manual these morons at B & S had some stupid parts diagrams in no particular order. Therefore I had to spend much more time than necessary trying to identify the parts(done in simple line drawings). It was difficult to actually identify anything. Then I had to remove four different parts just to get to the carburetor. I'm still annoyed at the whole thing and what an utter rip-off their brand of parts is.
posted by Xul at 9:13 PM
9 Comments:
the thing just floods out and won't start.
Yep. Had that with my car once. The damn thing didn't start right away and I foolishly pumped in more gas. Nice job BTW.
So I had to spend the next 10 minutes trying to get her back to her feet.
Well, that's one way to get some exercise. ;) BTW calling your mom a c*nt seems a bit harsh.
The whole area is just so damn cool that I'm going to have to add it to my bucket list!
I've been there. It's pretty much the only part of the Dutch landscape that has genuine hills in it. IIRC those caves are also somewhat famous because someone found an mosasaurus fossil there.
Nice job BTW. Thanks!
calling your mom a c*nt seems a bit harsh. I thought I made it clear that it's the Briggs & Stratton peeps who are the cunts "So the pack of cunts at Briggs & Stratton can kiss my ass with their hyper-inflated prices" and not my mother. I need to edit this post anyway. I forgot the part about the ridiculously useless manual they have. Anyway, it was funny about my mother since she's always riding everyone's ass about being careful about this, that, and the other and she's the one who isn't careful.
I've been there Really?!? When? Do you have any pics? I think they have that monasaurus at the Natural History Museum. That and the Rat King...what a cool museum!
I thought I made it clear that it's the Briggs & Stratton peeps who are the cunts
Oops! sorry! :/
When? Do you have any pics?
No pics, it was a long time ago. I've only been to the general area, not the caves.
what a cool museum!
Do you like museums? Are there any cool ones in Miami?
Do you like museums? Oh yes! Especially natural history museums. Are there any cool ones in Miami? There's the Museum of Science and Planetarium that I've been to a couple times. It's one of those hands-on exhibit type places mainly geared for kids. The one in Ft. Lauderdale is the same way. The best one was the Graves' Museum in Dania. It was a small natural history museum but it's closed now(legal/financial trouble). Their collections got sent to the University of Florida's nat. hist. museum up in Gainsville. The only other cool one I can think of is in Miami Beach, the Wolfsonian, but I've never been to that one.
BTW, I've noticed that you've been up very early lately. Kidlet patrol?
I've noticed that you've been up very early lately
Well, early but not very early... What makes you think so?
What makes you think so? The time stamps on your posts have been getting earlier and earlier. :)
Hmm, well, let's see if we can get to some sort of calibration here. As I write this, local time is: 15:23
Looks like we've got about a difference of 6 hours between us, if the time stamp of 9:23 AM is your local time.
At what (early) time of day did you think I was writing my comments?
Well, for some reason I thought there was a 5 hour time difference. So the one looked to be about 9:30-ish your time. That's early for me! Seems it was 10:30-ish. Still early for me...to be on the computer, anyway. :)
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