Fixing a Honda push lawn mower

[ohiofarmer 3,276]

I really knew nothing about this mower as I found it abandoned at a rental. It may be and probably is stolen ,but that is a long story. It has an automatic choke which i did not understand while repairing it. For those who want an auto choke,, its a ten dollar or more item and it is some kind of thermal wax that is located on the carburetor , so look it up.if you want OEM.  I am going with a pull string, so cannot offer advice about the choke.

  The main complaint about these mowers is the six or fourteen gaskets on the carb , engine air diverter, lever plate,and air box that just makes it impossible to adjust the mixture screws. if you have such a machine, this is the easy way to work on them.

   First,all thiss horrible assembly is held on with bolts. not studs, but bolts , it would be easy to mount all these layers of stuff. fortunately, your harbor Freight 99 dollar horizontal engine has the same 6 MM studs that you need. If those are not long enough , then the larger 14 hP has 133 MM studs.So remove one bolt and insert a stud., then the other stud. Now you can remove the linkage plate that does lord knows what with bunches of z bend rods and such, but basically operates the engine brake and throttle. So on to the carb to clean it.

   My carb has a flag soldered to the idle circuit adjustment, so take a Dremel tool and remove it so the orifice can be cleaned. That little flag is so the user cannot make the settings too rich and make Greta Thornberg satisfied, I guess. Your punishment for removal is thousands of dollars, or having to listen to Greta say" How DARE you!" ten thousand times. Then just clean the carb and check the passages. some of the carbs are too plugged up and they will hunt . If Mustie1 cannot clean them, then i cant either, so at that point you can buy a new carb

   Then you have a choice of using the studs to mount everything back or going back to the bolts through the airbox. the thing is, that you really cannot quite get to that idle circuit screw behind the airbox to adjust it.If you somehow manage to assemble the thing the standard way by using the bolts, think how frustrating that could be. I did find out later that Honda actually has a stud kit for mechanics to work on these things. The kit in all probability is just the carb stud borrowed from a horizontal engine.

  BTW, mine runs like a top.Starts the first pull. I will add a choke lever and inquire to the police if anyone got a mower stolen. It was fun to figure all this out. Carb studs are cheap to buy aftermarket because there are so many clone engines out there.

Edited March 10, 2022 by ohiofarmer