Win some, you loose some!

[Bailes1992]

As I'll be moving into my first house within the next few weeks I've obviously been buying stuff and acquiring stuff ready!
On the way I've managed to scrounge some free things.

First was a Numatic Edward hoover that stopped working, it's basically a Henry on wheels. I was told it had been making a screeching for a while and eventually died.
Stripped it down and found that not only had the brushes on the motor failed but the springs behind them had actually worn away too!
Picked up two brushes for £8 each, swapped them over and now it works a treat! Cleaned it thoroughly and even disinfected it.
A £200 hoover for £16

My Parents recently sold a static caravan they've had down the Gower for 12 years. Unfortunately as Me and my Sister have gotten older we have used it less and less till it wasen't worth keeping any more.
I managed to scrounge a flymo that has only been used about 10 times, a petrol strimmer which was bought in the mid 90's and a Kartcher pressure washer. None of which have been used in about 5-6 years!

The Flymo was great and cut our front lawn without issue! I gave it a quick clean, sharpened the blade and boxed it all back up ready to move out.

The strimmer had a few issues. First the engine was a bit stiff to turn. I removed a cover on the side of the crank and used a syringe and my finger to put a thin layer of two stroke oil on the bore and around the crank while turning the engine over very slowly (I had the spark plug removed so there was no compression). Once it started easing up I put some fuel in it, cleaned and gapped the spark plug and tried to fire it up. After about 15 mins of cranking it wouldn't fire! I looked closley and noticed the fuel hoses had all perished and were leaking all over the place. I managed to get two new fuel hoses and a spark plug for £6, fitted them and it fired up right away, although a bit smokey at first.
I have a stream running through the back of my garden. Behind it is usually 2 foot high of grass and brambles and the odd snake. I spent 2 hours giving the strimmer a good beating and it cut it all right back effortlessly, well once all the oil had burned off. I spent a bit of time adjusting the fueling and it seemed much more gutsy than the stimmer in the house that's only a few years old!

Unfortunately I wasn't so lucky with the pressure washer. I connected it to a hose pipe and noticed it was leaking from the head seal. I managed to get one from Karcher for £3 delivered. I also bought an 'O' ring kit from Halfords and replaced all the 'O' rings that I had removed when doing the job.
I hooked it back up again, bled all the air out the system and gave it some power. It fired straight up and was working beautifully for about 30 seconds. The pressure washer slowed and slowed until it stopped altogether.
I stripped it all down and a bearing on the motor had seized up causing the motor to overload and burn out. Kartcher won't sell parts for the motor but will sell a new one whole for £140

Ahh well, win some you loose some!

[benczuk]

You looked into joining FreeCycle (http://www.freecycle.org)? its amazing what people give away that they would otherwise throw out.

[steve_earwig]

That's a bugger Was it a good one? Maybe Karcher don't make the motors so look for numbers on it.

I think I have the predecessor of that Numatic, it's noisy and the metal can rusted through so I had to patch it up with fibreglass, but it's still going. At the moment I'm fixing a Liv for the vets here, tall, plastic, wet & dry with a pump for wetting what you're going to hoover, it was made in Slovenia but do you think I can get parts for it here?

Edit: Freecycle sounds like Skipdivers unanimous I should be a founder member...

[Bailes1992]

Pressure washer was a poverty edition '210'.
Probably only cost £80-£90 new!

[Welly]

We've got a Henry and a George (George is the mother* of all 'oovers) they must be 17 years old now and still sweet I've also got a 17 year old Karcher 620M with the brass cylinder 'ed, I still use it maybe 3 times a month and all it's asked for is a new hosey-lance and only because the old one welded itself to the outlet fred due to the aluminium corroding a bit.

There's something satisfying about a petrol stwimmer, I got one from Argos a few years back, it's a McCullock (or something) cost £80.00 and has been a little gem. I run it on super-plus and Halfrods 'Garden Machinery' 2-stroke oil and there's not a whiff of smoke....I've even been seen sniffing the eggsauce fumes in my face and been questioned as to my actions

I like your attitude of fixing things, you'll go a long way

Bailes, try and source a 620M second hand if you can - mine was purchased in 1997!

[steve_earwig]

I still use it maybe 3 times a month

I can't say I use mine that much, then I can connect directly to the (ridiculously high pressure) mains here. Still, when I do fetch it out it's such a good bluddy thing to have I can't imagine how I'd manage without it...

I'll tell you what else I'd never be without and that's a compressor...

[Welly]

I'm only really using it to generate the big gay Snow Foam sh*t I use (pre-wash) and then to pressure 'rinse' the paintwork, I don't pressure-wash the bodywork as such. I suppose I use it like a hose, in fact it uses 80% less warty than a hose, and you can tell by the lack of small river running away from the car.

I passed up on the opportunity of a FREE compressor (a proper big f*cker) and regret it. One thing I would like in the future is a Reverse Osmosis water treatment plant

[steve_earwig]

If it was 2nd hand you'd have needed to be careful, they can rust from the inside-out if nobody's careful with letting condensation out. They don't explode, as such...

Is that so you can save some of these floods before the sun comes out and they declare a hosepipe ban again? I've got a couple of water barrels here, I don't bother with that guff as I only use it for washing the car and watering the plants.

[Bailes1992]

The strimmer I got is a McCulloch badged up as something else.
I'm quite impressed with it. Miles better than the 2 year old Ryobi nonsense we have at home!

That said I think il be getting rid of all my grass anyway as I want a bigger drive.

If I could get parts for the pressure washer motor I'd replace it, if I'd thought to just check the motor before I fired it up I would have seen it was siezed up and could have had a new bearing made! Unfortunately now all the winding are burned out there is nothing I can do. There isn't any numbers or identification marks either.

Think I'm going to buy a new one. Need to get a hose pipe and a new foam lance too!

A compressor is something I really wouldn't mind! Could have a nice selection of windy tools then and use it to spray the missus KA when I repair the compulsory filler cap rust once a year!

[steve_earwig]

I borrowed a McCulloch strimmer once off a mate, I couldn't get it to fire I mentioned it to my dad (Lord of all things with engines on them) and he said they're like that McCullochs It also had a curved shaft, which he told me to avoid in favour of one with a bevel drive. So I bought a Husqvarna which was excellent for the first year but then it started cutting out occasionally. I kept stripping the carb down and cleaning it but it didn't help so last year I changed all the seals and diaphragms on it. After that I took it into the garden where it cut out 5 times in 20 minutes I was severely tempted to smash the stupid thing to tiny pieces with a hammer but I checked on line and found that the carb had been superseded and I actually managed to get the later one sent to me for 40 quid all in from the US (postage under 100 quid from the US, who'd have thought it?). I only had one more use out of it last year but not only did it not cut out, it's also more powerful and louder Dunno what was wrong with the old carb but I suspect I know why they changed it.

Btw I would have taken it back to the shop but they've proved themselves to be incompetent rip-off merchants - Goran's dad took his Stihl chainsaw in there for a service and they managed to break the carb and seize it solid

I really should get myself a chainsaw, the only problem is my dad used to shout at me to stay away from him when he was using one when I was little kid and I now have some weird phobia of them

[Welly]

I mustard mitt the McCulloch is a bit of a twat to start......> choke..fire...cut out...less choke?....no....more choke then?...no....primer bulb?....maybe....less throttle?...if you like...more throttle? whatever I reduced the idle speed on mine and occasionally after idling a while it won't like it when I give the throttle a squeeze, dunno why but cuts out, but when it's happy it's spot on.

[steve_earwig]

Sounds like it's running a little weak perhaps? Btw I actually prefer to see a little smoke so I know it's well lubricated, modern 2 stroke oils don't tend to whisker plugs or coke up whatever you do with them within reason.

Hussy - choke on, prod the primer a few times, pull, fires. Choke off, pull, fires, runs. Leave on fast idle for 30 seconds or so, ready. Although when it was doing the cutting out thing it was more like pull, pull, pull, pull, check engine switch, pull, pull, pull, pull, remove jumper, pull, dab at the primer, pull, pull, check switch again, pull, pull, curse loudly, pull, starts and runs like nothing ever happened

[Doggy]

I really should get myself a chainsaw, the only problem is my dad used to shout at me to stay away from him when he was using one when I was little kid and I now have some weird phobia of them

Is a leccy one a possibility for you? They're much cheaper / quieter / more reliable / less scary. My latest Tesco special has a clutch that lets the chain stop instantly you release the trigger, well before the motor coasts to a halt.

[Bailes1992]

Started mine up a few times now just to make sure all is well.

Got it down to a tee!

Prime
Full choke and crank until you hear it fire a few times.
Half choke and it will start on first pull.
Leave it Idle on half choke for 10mins.
Turn the choke off and crack on strimming.

The first time I started it after I put a load of two stroke oil in the bottom end it smoked my garden out.
I let it idle for about 20mins on half choke while I went inside for lunch. Came outside and it was still smoking. Took a few ramps up and down the throttle to clear it all!

If you tried to give it more than 1/4 throttle it would bog right down then after a second or two would pick up. Had a google and there is a high end and low end fuel screw located on the carburetor. Played about for half hour till I got a nice smooth pull.
Had it running for 2 and a half hours. 2 of those hours were pretty much on full throttle cutting the nettles and grass back in my garden. Just made sure to keep it under load so it wasn't revving it's tits off all the time.

[steve_earwig]

Is a leccy one a possibility for you? They're much cheaper / quieter / more reliable / less scary. My latest Tesco special has a clutch that lets the chain stop instantly you release the trigger, well before the motor coasts to a halt.

From my limeted experience 2 stoke chainsaws also have brakes on them these days. I can't imagine an electric being up to the sort of stuff I have planned...

Came outside and it was still smoking.

It probably ended up in the exhaust. T'wife's lawnmower does this if I tip it up the wrong way to clean it and smokes for ages afterwards. Not that I care much.

Had a google and there is a high end and low end fuel screw located on the carburetor.

I really enjoy that in the Hussy's manual, take the head off, make sure it's warm, then hold the throttle wide open - RRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!! I'm sure it's gonna go bang at any moment turn the mixture screw clockwise to the highest revs and then back it off half a turn... but there isn't half a turn available because it's got one of those tamperproof jobbies In the end I just wound it clockwise until it was bogging down on the throttle (like what Welly's does) , backwards until it started smoking and then put it half way between. No holes in the piston yet