u/vladdielenin

picked up a john deere with a kohler cv15 last year from a neighbor who moved. he said it ran but needed a little work. got it home and it runs, barely, on full choke only, dies the moment I push it off. compression feels low on the pull but I dont have a tester yet.

carb is gummed, that much I already know. pulling the bowl this weekend to clean it. but if compression is actually low when I test it, am I looking at a ring job that makes sense to do myself or is this one of those engines where you just walk away. its a 2004 I think, probably 800 hours on it.

I can clean the carb and see where that gets me but Id rather know going in whether the cv15 is worth the ring kit money or if Im better off cutting my losses and finding another deck. whats your instinct on these

thought I had it all handled. got the ski uncovered last weekend, flushed the fuel, checked plugs, put it back under the cover. felt productive. came back out two days later and the compartment under the seat still had water in it from last fall because I didnt check that part and the cover just trapped the moisture.

now the seat foam smells like a basement and Im pretty sure the battery tray has been sitting in water for six months. pulled everything out today to dry. going to be smelling swamp until at least memorial day.

how do you guys actually dry these out after a long winter. just leave the hatches open in the garage for a week or is there a trick Im missing

saturday morning. ramp is backed up four trailers deep because one guy up top cant back a trailer. clearly new. new truck, paper tags still on the trailer, boat looks expensive. hes been at it maybe fifteen minutes and everybody is waiting because nobody wants to be that guy.

I walked up and offered to back it down for him. he said no hes got it. five more minutes. jackknifes it again. at that point I walked up again and told him he was holding up five boats and he should go find a parking lot and practice before he comes back. he got mad, called me a couple things, and his wife just said honey let him. I backed it down, handed him the keys, he didnt say thank you.

feel like I did the right thing but the way his face looked when I walked away I cant stop thinking about it. would you guys have just kept your mouth shut and waited

fired up the old 026 yesterday for the first time since fall. ran fine, cut fine, but theres a faint rasp at high rpm when its out of the wood that I dont remember from last year. running fresh 50:1, plug looks normal, bar oil flow is good.

cord still snaps back the way it always has so compression feels right. could be I just havent heard it free-rev in five months and forgot what normal sounds like. I still cant tell if its clutch side, flywheel side, or just no-load noise that I never paid attention to before.

gonna give it one more careful run and then decide if Im checking bearings or just overthinking it. if this was your 026 would you keep running it and listen, or start checking bearings now

two weeks ago this thing fired on three pulls and I let myself believe the stabilizer gods were real. mowed last weekend, ran great. parked it. came back yesterday and the same mower needed eight pulls before it even coughed.

it sat ten days and went right back to the hard-start routine, so the bowl mustve gone half-dry again or something in there is just touchy. I should either run it dry between uses or stop acting surprised every time pump gas acts like pump gas. but the drain screw is tucked right behind the muffler shield on this engine and last time I tried I dropped it into the grass and spent twenty minutes on my knees with the telescoping magnet before I gave up and bought a new one at the hardware store.

so I keep acting like that last easy start meant something and it keeps proving it didnt. five minutes of swearing, then I pull the bowl and see whats going on in there.

you guys actually draining the bowl on these between mows, or just living with the first-start drama

my uncle passed and left me his 03 ranger with the 3.0 vulcan. truck has about 140k on it but it sat in his driveway for roughly two years with maybe a quarter tank of gas. I got it running yesterday, it starts and idles but runs a little rough and has a slight miss under load. I already drained the old gas and put fresh fuel in, changed the oil which was basically sludge, and put a new battery in it. my plan is plugs and wires next since those are probably original at this mileage, then maybe fuel filter. does that sound right or am I missing something obvious for a truck that sat this long? trying not to dump a bunch of money into it all at once but I also dont want to drive it and make something worse.

took the sumo out saturday for the first real ride since october. maybe 45 minutes in the saddle and I was already doing math on what I could get for my civic. there is something about ripping through town on a supermoto in april that makes sitting in traffic on monday feel like actual punishment. I dont even go anywhere useful on the bike, just loops through the same backroads I already know by heart. my girlfriend asked where I went and I said "nowhere" which is basically true. six months of winter storage and the first thing this bike does is ruin every other way of getting around for me again. happens every single spring.

every spring I tell myself this is the year I ride it as is. no upgrades, no parts, just put gas in it and go. that lasts about four days before I'm on ebay at midnight looking at exhausts I don't need.

last april I said "just new grips." that turned into grips, then a mirror, then a brake lever, then somehow a full variator kit because "well I already have the panel off." I added it up in december and it was more than my car insurance for the whole year.

the scooter runs exactly the same as before. maybe slightly louder. but hey at least it looks cooler sitting in my garage not being ridden because it was raining.

pulled the mower out of the shed this morning. hasnt been touched since november. figured id give it a pull and see what happens since I ran it dry before storage.

three pulls. fired right up. I fist pumped in my driveway and my neighbor was out getting his mail just staring at me.

try explaining to somebody who doesnt wrench why a briggs firing on three pulls after five months makes you feel like you won something. they dont get it. spent all winter second guessing myself for not putting stabilizer in it too but I guess running it dry was enough this time.

now watch itll refuse to start next weekend just to humble me.