Auction Find! Electric Start Push Mower.
- May 21
- 3 min read
A while ago, I won an auction for an older Toro push mower. The listing said it was in good condition and the pics looked pretty good, too. The best part? It's electric start! Not the kind where you need to plug it into the wall in order to get it started. No, this has its own, onboard battery! It's also self propelled. Since it has a Briggs & Stratton engine, I figured there was little chance the engine was bad, so I placed my bid. Turns out, I won...
I brought it home and it sat in the garage for a while. I was busy with other things, so I didn't really do anything with it. After I had to mow the grass a few times, I decided it was time to get the "new" mower out. The plan was, if it worked, I would take it to the Estate. We don't have a lot of grass to mow, well not a lot of lawn type grass. Just some around the camper and the fire pit. Everything else gets done with the Bush Hog on the tractor. So, for less than $100, I figured why not?
I took the battery off and put it on a charger, though I knew it was bad. It showed 0V when I checked it, but I figured I would try anyway. While it was charging, I tried starting it with the pull start. After putting a little fresh gas in it and priming the carb, it miraculously came to life. Lucky or me, whoever had the mower last had drained the tank so there was no old nasty gas in it.
It took a little while to run well, but it got there. I then tried the self propelled part of the mower. This was a bit underwhelming. It seemed like the cable was stretched or there was another issue causing the cable not to move the pulley enough to make the belt tight and engage the drive. I tore into it and, what I think is a combination of the cable being stretched and the belt also being dried out and stretched. So, did I replace either of those items? Nope! What I did instead, for "testing purposes only" was to add a few small zip ties to the cable between the end and the spring that put tension on the pulley to add some preload and make the drive engage earlier. Turns out, it worked pretty well. The drive is still not overly powerful or fast, but it does pull itself along. Once that was done, I put it all back together and mowed the lawn to see how well it worked.
I mowed my entire lawn, twice, about 4 days apart. The first time was more to see if the engine would run and not quite during the mowing process as well as to make sure the drive would stay engaged after multiple engagement and disengagement cycles. I was very impressed with how to did.
The second mowing was after I checked out the electric start. I was correct, the battery was bad. After charging for about 3 days, it only showed 6V when I removed it from the charger. This was not unexpected. What I did was use a 20V drill battery, for "testing purposes only" to see if the starter would work. After rigging the battery up, I turned the key and sure enough, it turned. After priming the carb a few times, I hit the key again and it fired right up! Win for me! I mowed again, this time with the bagger attached and was impressed with how well the mower cut and bagged the grass. I am pretty sure it cut better than my Craftsman that had a new blade put on last year.
Now, I am undecided. Do I take it to the Estate and use it there? Or, do I keep it here and take my old Craftsman up to the Estate? Or, do I try to sell it to make a little money so I can buy a riding mower to use up there? Decisions, decisions.
If you want to see all the things I had to do to make it work, have a look at the YouTube video I made.
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