Spare parts/supplies for home, appliance, and/or small engine emergency repairs

[NapalmMan67]

I'm sure the longer heat time frame in the weather there plays a big role in deterioration of the rubber/plastic parts.  I've been to FL, Dec, Jan and Feb are tolerable at best weather wise for heat and humidity.  The rest of the year just sucks imo. I am a winter Ie; snow, ice, more snow, sub zero temps kind of guy.

When my current Echo trimmer really dies, I'll replace it with a Stihl.  I have a couple of their blowers that are awesome compared to other brands.  

And fwiw, a few posts back you mentioned a Toro mower-  The one I had was the biggest POS ever, they actually didn't have a primer bulb on it.  Was a lemon from the get go, had it in the shop two weeks after purchasing for not starting and about every month it was back.  Advertised as "Guaranteed to Start" technology...  BS.  It was a premium model in 2010 when I got it, well over $500.  Never will own one again.  Sorry, just a little rant on them.
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[MacWa77ace]

I'm sure the longer heat time frame in the weather there plays a big role in deterioration of the rubber/plastic parts.  I've been to FL, Dec, Jan and Feb are tolerable at best weather wise for heat and humidity.  The rest of the year just sucks imo. I am a winter Ie; snow, ice, more snow, sub zero temps kind of guy.

When my current Echo trimmer really dies, I'll replace it with a Stihl.  I have a couple of their blowers that are awesome compared to other brands. 

And fwiw, a few posts back you mentioned a Toro mower-  The one I had was the biggest POS ever, they actually didn't have a primer bulb on it.  Was a lemon from the get go, had it in the shop two weeks after purchasing for not starting and about every month it was back.  Advertised as "Guaranteed to Start" technology...  BS.  It was a premium model in 2010 when I got it, well over $500.  Never will own one again.  Sorry, just a little rant on them.
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Your making me feel cold SubZero, LOL. I can take freezing temps for short periods, like a week or two on vacations. But I can't take getting out of the shower into the cold for very long. I can take the summers here over the winters up north, I'm am a Florida Boy born and raised. 

I'm really leaning towards the Ethanol not the temps on the silicone. Its supposed to be good to 400 degrees but its just weird that if I prep a tool for storage [drain fluids] and don't use it for a couple years, when I go back an press the bulb it'll just crack and disintegrate. I must be doing it wrong.

This Toro of mine is incredible, other than the transmission going just recently it has never failed to start on the slightest of pulls. [hope I didn't just jinx it] AND I bought it used at least 14 years ago. Only maintenance I've done on it is change the oil, plugs, air filter and sharpened the blade. You definitely got a lemon sounds like.

I used a Craftsman that had a manual choke, manual throttle, and that was really powerful for a 22 inch side discharge self drive. It was harder to start but I was using that from about 4th grade 'til Sophomore in college until we sold it and it was still working fine as I recall.

[NapalmMan67]

Temps dropped from 75* yesterday to 41* today, going down to the 20s tonight.  My wife was frumpy with me last weekend when our house was 55*.  I love it.

One of the best push mowers I ever had was an old Murray I bought new for $65.00, ran that for 20+ years and sold it for $40.00.  The deck had rusted out in spots a few times that I had patched, wore out I think 3 set of wheels too.  Just kept chugging though.  

As I got older, I got really tired of mowing a half an acre of grass with it though.  Thank goodness for the 36"w self propelled Scag these days. lol

[MacWa77ace]

Small engine recent anecdotes [with tools and parts OT]:

My Stihl string trimmer [dedicated], that I inherited last year, and I had immediately replaced  the airfilter, spark plug, fuel filter and bulb on it, worked less and less reliably and then finally, a couple of months ago, I couldn't keep it running. The main symptom was that the primer bulb wouldn't fill and wouldn't maintain fuel in the bulb. BUT since I have another Ryobi power head that has the clickit attachments I put off messing with the Stihl any further for the time being. I was in the middle of yardwerk for chrissake.

A couple of months later and then my Ryobi just started doing something really weird after working completely fine the last time I used it.  The next week I tried to start it and it didn't want to start but finally did, then it didn't want to run unless I was at full throttle and it was turning as if it was at about half throttle. Then last week I got finished edging with the Ryobi, dealing with this barely running issue, and when I went to change to the string trimmer to do the trimming, it just wouldn't start at all. Crap, all I really needed to finish was string trim.

So I pulled out the Stihl and my carb cleaner spray and started cleaning up the carb, took it apart and sprayed into every orifice that looked like it might be a fuel flow etc. [I hate doing repairs WHILE I'm in the middle of doing my lawn] But it still wouldn't prime right. So pulled the bulb section off again and very carefully pressed the diaphragm and fuel shot up. That's a good thing. Put the bulb back on and it primed, started, and ran perfectly. Something was clogged or stuck. That let me finish trimming but I couldn't trim my hedges with the hedge attachment on my Ryobi since that wouldn't work.

So this weekend before I started my yardwerk, I was looking at the carburetor on my Ryobi, my first suspicion, and had the air filter off when I, for some reason, pushed on the carb side to side and there was some play there.  Then I looked at the piston housing and saw some oil coming past the gasket and moved it again and it was definitely moving. The friggin' piston housing was loose and I had lost compression. No wonder why I couldn't start it. 

On this Ryobi you have to take the whole thing apart to get at the bolts that hold that part tight. Luckily I have torx bits and a battery powered drill to make quick work of the 12 bolts I have to remove. Only my lithium battery died after the fourth bolt. So out comes the manual torx drivers [and a bunch of cuss words]. And after tightening the piston housing up, and reassembling all those bolts [manually tightening them], it started right up and worked fine. But since I was kinda in a hurry I didn't clean the oil off the bolts and clean out the bolt holes, and then use Loctite on them. So I bet it'll get loose again.

I might, for now, drill out two access holes thru the plastic casing for each of the two bolts that hold that piston housing on so I can just tighten it without taking the thing apart. The right way to do it would be to take it completely apart, clean out all the oil and Loctite the bolts back in. I don't feel like doing that this summer. It's to hot.  So probably just drilling IF, the piston housing gets loose again.

[MacWa77ace]

This Toro of mine is incredible, other than the transmission going just recently it has never failed to start on the slightest of pulls. [hope I didn't just jinx it] AND I bought it used at least 14 years ago. Only maintenance I've done on it is change the oil, plugs, air filter and sharpened the blade. Y

So I still haven't fixed the transmission on the Toro. A new transmission costs $99 and probably an hour's work. So I'm telling myself that I'm 'in training' pushing that thing around my yard without the power drive in the heat of the Florida summer.

[NT2C]

Loctite on those bolts likely wouldn't hold for long, Mac.  The stuff breaks down with heat.

[MacWa77ace]

Loctite on those bolts likely wouldn't hold for long, Mac.  The stuff breaks down with heat.

Yep.

I have some Rocksett also, used it on a muffler's bolt on another trimmer's power head. The shield cover came loose and was making a ringing noise, IIRC with not so much success and that is supposed to be high temp. That's why i'm not sure I want to waste my time taking it back apart to do all that on the chance it'll work.

[MacWa77ace]

TL:DR Keep your old broken stuff for parts.

Last Sunday [yesterday] I was trimming my hedge, I have to divide hedge trimming up into 7 sections because I can't do the whole thing in one go, time and physical capacity limitations. I have a big hedge, it keeps most rager zombies out.

Anyhow I was almost done with the 'inside back' section, maybe 15 more feet out of 120 when the snap on hedger  attachment started vibrating really bad. Damn. All I have to do is go 15 more feet, by about 9 ft high. I try to keep going but its not really cutting either. 

Now this is after I've already mowed, edged, trimmed, and blown my yard and done 4/5 of the inside back hedge. [Luckily I had raked up 3 bags of avocado tree leaves on Saturday or I'd be 3 hours in. March is my Avocado tree's fall here in SE Florida]



I go to my 'fast fix work area', which is a footstool at the front of my garage and my workbench is the driveway, and open up the transmission housing. 6 bolts with battery power driver #11. I don't see anything wrong Initially so pull out the first 'blade gear' #9 and still don't see any reason for me to be doing this. UNTIL I line up the blades evenly [as in the drawing] and then I can see thru the grease that the second 'blade gear' is broken. Wow.

Luckily I have an old craftsman articulating hedge trimmer that this one replaced a few years ago due to other issues. And I kept it for parts. So I pulled out the first 'blade gear' from that and used that to fix the issue. Put both hedge trimmer attachments back together and went back to work.

Note: these craftsman articulating hedge trimmers are really durable. I use to use Ryobi's snap on hedge trimmer attachments but they would only last a year before the gears would give out due to the transmission housing being made of plastic. They were cheap though and IIRC $69 each. These craftsman's have a metal transmission housing and cost upwards of $120 each. But this one has lasted since before covid. Maybe 5 years.

[MacWa77ace]

Weird stuff with my Ryobi power head the last few weeks. I didn't need parts just the right tools.

From my previous post you know that my carburetor loosened somehow.  They symptom was really bad power followed by failure to start. Fixed by tightening the carburetor.

Well this Saturday I had finished all the regular stuff, mow, edge, trim, and had started on doing some hedging, when all the sudden, like flipping a switch, I got low power and a vibration. It felt almost like and ignition timing thing. But I shut it off and went to check it out and tried starting it to no avail.  I was hot, tired, and so I just put everyting away and said I'll deal with it tomorrow.

So Sunday I set up my 'I'm really going to work on this thing' bench and chair and tools, thinking that I might be an ignition coil thing. First I took the back cover off. Then I gapped the plug.

Then I checked to see if the carburetor was loose again by pushing back and forth on it.  well it wasn't that, it was the entire cylinder head was loose.  . I'm now kinda happy because I don't have to deal with an ignition issue and I found something wrong right away [diagnosing sucks]. I had to take the front cover off to access one of the two bolts holding the cylinder head on. Really only one of the two bolts was loose, but that was enough. After tightening it up, putting the power head back together, it started right up.

[MacWa77ace]

I made a twizzler out of a Ryobi torx bit.



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I had to replace the crankcase gasket on my Ryobi powerhead, it was leaking oil. And I attempted to remove the muffler but the torx bolts were seized and the bolts themselves were made of a much stronger metal than my set of Ryobi bits I got at HomeDept. The bolts are fine.

I didn't have to take off the muffler to do this repair, so other than WTF, it didn't matter.

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[EBuff75]

I made a twizzler out of a Ryobi torx bit.



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I had to replace the crankcase gasket on my Ryobi powerhead, it was leaking oil. And I attempted to remove the muffler but the torx bolts were seized and the bolts themselves were made of a much stronger metal than my set of Ryobi bits I got at HomeDept. The bolts are fine.

I didn't have to take off the muffler to do this repair, so other than WTF, it didn't matter.

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I bought a ton of impact driver bits in various sizes and types because I've chewed up / bent / broken so many of them, and I hate it when that happens and I don't have spares!  I love those "tic tac" style dispensers that come with like 15-20 bits in them, like these:  https://a.co/d/6dIqDdz  

[Rednex]

Mac i don't know anyone that hasn't done that a few times. I try and keep a full set of different bits ( 100 or so i think) and a 10 pack or more of the most common ones i corkscrew like T15, T20, T25 several allen sizes too. Don't ask how many #2 philips i got  lost count.

[NT2C]

I've never bent or broken a toolant bit.

https://a.co/d/6dAFES0

[MacWa77ace]

I've never bent or broken a toolant bit.

https://a.co/d/6dAFES0

Yeah, those Impact bits I'd assume would have to be made of better stuff. Plus isn't there a flex shaft on them as part of the design also?

I use these cheapo ones in a ratchet bit driver and a couple of drill drivers. I don't have an impact driver, but am in the market for a 1/2" impact wrench. To damn expensive! And I'm leery of those $49 no name ones. Mainly due to after market battery replacements. But at that price its less than a battery for a Milwaukie or Dewalt.