Proper Tooling Makes Things Easier

Last week while mowing the lawn, I ran over something that immediately made my machine shaking like Michael J. Fox on meth. My (accurate) guess was that something got caught in the blades or bent one bad, so I stopped mowing, parked the zerp-turn and did what any smart self-reliable person nowadays does: Checked on Google/Youtube/Amazon for solutions.

The problem is that that darn machine is heavy enough to require external mechanical assistance, unstable enough to make the use of a regular jack a viral video on the Darwin Awards if I had the need to get under it. There are plenty of specialized jacks, lifters and contraptions for riding mowers, but they were either flimsy things that did not made me war/fuzzy security wise or very expensive ones that cost as much as having some repair guy just drop by and extend his hand requesting payment.

I eventually decided that some sort of pulley contraption would work lifting the mower and lo-and-behold, I was not the only one who thought along those lines according to Youtube. The ones that looked the best were those who used a hoist and to my surprise and since I don’t plan to be swapping diesel engines out of tractor trailers, I saw that a 1-ton Harbor Freight hoist was indeed affordable and had good reviews.

So I got me one for just under $70.

I used four soft loop tie downs rated at 3,600Lbs to hook to a garage rafter and went to town.

I also bought two heavy rubber tire chucks for about $8 a pop to reduce the movement of the mower and avoid that viral video. Also for safety, I added a couple of floor jacks under the frame because over-safety is never a bad idea.

And then, I found this wrapped around the blade and shaft:

Using a combination of angle grinder with metal disk and pulling hard with heavy gloves, I managed to remove the intrusion. (You read that in the voice of Burt Gummer, didn’t you?).

The mower was lowered, started and tested and no unusual vibration was detected. Success!

After that, I just removed the hoist from the rafter since the missus seems a hanging chain will somehow scratch the paint of her car that she keeps in the garage even though I tried to make the point that it could be a good reference as to how far back she can reverse. She was unmoved.

Installation of the hoist, fixing the mower and removing everything took maybe an hour. And now the only drawback is I no longer have an excuse to finish mowing the almost hay sized laws around the house.

No good deed and all that.