My old lawnmower finally gave out on me last Saturday...

I was halfway through mowing the front yard, maybe 30 feet from the gate, when the engine just coughed and died. Smelled like burning oil and plastic all at once. This was a 15 year old Craftsman push mower I bought off my neighbor for $40 back in 2018. Never changed the oil and I'm pretty sure the blade was held on with pure stubbornness. I tried pulling the cord maybe 20 times before I realized it was toast. Ended up pushing the stupid thing back to the shed and borrowing my brother's mower for the rest of the lawn. Has anyone else had a piece of equipment fail at the worst possible moment like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

shah.ben5d ago

Ha, reminds me of my old pressure washer that blew a seal halfway through cleaning the driveway for a family BBQ. Everyone was showing up in like 2 hours and I had halfway done stripes of clean concrete leading up to the front door. Ended up just throwing down a cheap outdoor rug over the dirty part and told my brother in law the driveway was a 'modern art piece.' Thing was a gas powered unit I bought at a garage sale for 20 bucks and it ran like a champ until that exact moment. Never did fix it, just let it sit in the corner of the garage as a monument to poor timing.

spencer_perry777d ago

Happened to me with my leaf blower last fall. I was in the middle of blowing out the gutters and it just died mid blast. Took me like 15 minutes to realize the spark plug was completely gone. I ended up having to use a shop vac from inside the house to suck out the wet leaves, which was a nightmare. Thing was a cheap Ryobi I'd been beating on for years with zero maintenance. Its crazy how long stuff lasts when you treat it like garbage.