Disregard Any Second Sasquatch Reports

On July 2nd, a Connecticut motorist reported a Sasquatch sighting that turned out to be a teenager in a gorilla costume, so says UPI in this article:
http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2009/07/02/Conn-Sasquatch-a-costumed-teen/UPI-82521246571924/
Now if you happen to hear motorist screaming that today another sighting occurred that this time looks like the real thing, you may not have anything to worry about here either. It was just me, shirtless, mowing the lawn.

Turtle Power

The lawn mower was gradually working better and better, until Tuesday while mowing when the motor continued to run, but at such a slow pace that you could hear the grass rubbing against the mower blade. I had finished all my tweaks so was rather dumbfounded as to why this sudden drop in power. I first checked the slider switch that showed a turtle and a bunny (tortoise and a hare) with the switch near maximum speed. I pushed the slider as far as it could go to get all the bunny power I could out of this thing. On restarting, the mower sounded just as tired promising to choke and stall out with a even a greater inevitability than before.

Playing with the throttle proved that turtle and bunny logos are transposed. Yet another example of how poorly some products are manufactured. The good news is that now the mower is running at a satisfactory level for me now. Go turtle!

My mowing has been split up over a couple days now, occurring just before sunset. Mowing so late reminded me of how early America, being primarily agricultural, often made use of every available minute of sunlight. At least I'm afforded a lot of luxuries that my predecessors didn't have. Last night, after coming in from mowing, took a break by watching a tv show ("Heroes") and then worked on a few updates for two web sites.

Tonight, hopefully, I'll finish the lawn, start trimming more shrubs, do laundry, take care of a few bills, and get much needed updates unto my calendar. It will be another full night.

Smoke Rings

It felt like I have had this lawn mower forever. Reality is, I've had it since 2006. No repairs or maintenance ever. It's always run like a champ until recently. It still starts up and runs, but seems to lack the power that it normally has. It seems to run slower and quieter. I think it's not cutting quite as well, due to the slower engine speed, and I seems to push it along much slower to compensate. I guess its time to tinker and see if I can fix things.

Step 1: Check air filter. It's really just this sponge kind of thing. It was covered with greasiness on one side. I cleaned it up.
Result: I imagine that the engine is running smoother, but notice no difference in the power.

Step 2: Check the oil. When you open it up, and find that's there is no oil, that must be a sign that it needs some. I pour in the amount that should fill the tank with 10w40.
Result: The mower does seem to be picking up a bit more power gradually. Hopefully as the oil spreads along it will continue to gain this will solve my problem.

Step 3: Change spark plug. The original plug was a RJ19LM, and I got a J19LM instead. I was told the only difference is the later does not have a resistor to tone down radio interference (something I wouldn't need)
Result: No noticeable difference

So that's where I'm at right now, except for that when I poured in the oil, I put in the amount of oil I'd need to put into the empty tank, not thinking that although the dip stick showed no oil, that they would be some below the level of the dip stick. So I've overfilled. Dark smoke is sometimes just billowing out of the mower (is this the expression burning oil?) and sometimes the mower expels some rather interesting smoke rings.

I'm going to try running the mower a bit and see if the new oil circulating helps my power problem. If not I'm not sure what I'm doing next. It could need some kind of tweaking, but the manual suggest not to make adjustments to the motor yourself.