Four (or 5) simple lawn mower maintenance tips.

Hey, man up and maintain your lawn mower. It’s easy.

While you are in the lawn mower maintenance mood, get your kids out from behind the tablet and into the yard. Hands-on, baby.

Here are a few things we do at our house.

New season, new spark plug.

If your lawn mower is coughing and sputtering, this is a good place to start get it to not do that. Take a deep socket and remove the existing plug. Bring it with you to the hardware store or home center. Depending on where you go, you might have to Rosetta Stone your old spark plug model # with a new spark plug model #. Check the book there or ask the guy. Might as well bring in all of your plugs and replace them while you are working on lawn mower maintenance. This includes your string trimmer, blower, etc.

Sharp blades are better.

Sharp blades work better than dull ones on every lawn mower in the universe. Before wrenching off the blade, pull the spark plug wire off. Let’s just say I heard a story once about a guy who didn’t. He spun the blade. Then the motor compressed once and, well, Hiya lefty…Anyway, I like to sharpen on a sanding station (mine’s a Ryobi). Match up the bevel of the lawn mower blade to the belt, then sharpen. Wear eye protection during this step of maintenance.

Get the gunk.

The friction of built-up grass on the blade and under the mower deck makes the mower work harder to do less and it can frustrate you more. It’s like the mountain of processed food in your colon. Get rid of it and life is better. Our go-to tool for this is one of our always-go-to tools, our Hyde multi-tool. Get one and you’ll use it every project, and not just on lawn mower maintenance. Promise.

Check wheel height.

Cutting too low not only torches the grass and begs weeds to grow, it pointlessly strains the mower, too. Raise it to 3 inches—you’re not cutting a green for the Master’s—and let sharp blades do good work.

Avoid flooding the filter.

If you leave your lawn mower leaned over for too long during maintenance, you may flood the air filter with gas. So don’t leave it up-ended any longer than you have to. If you do flood the filter, either dry it out for a day or so, or get a new one.

Mark

A licensed contractor, tool expert, wood and outdoor enthusiast, and elite Spartan Race competitor, he writes about home improvement and tools for national magazines and websites, and teaches hands-on clinics for other remodeling professionals. Check out his book, The Carpenter's Notebook.

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