A Belated Hello From Alberta

[Ikes-Mower]

Well, hi everyone!

I joined this forum a while back when it first started. I've always been more active under the name "lobsterbox" on MyTractorForum.com, since I enjoy garden tractors immensely and am always up to no good with them as it seems.

Anyway, since this year's LT and GT endeavours all require hefty investments, I've been finding myself focused a lot more on what actually gets me most of my money: push mowers.

For the past 3 years, being an unemployed teenager has caused me to get creative. I have spent hundreds of hours building, fixing and selling push mowers to finance the other parts of my life. Because of this, I know a great deal about how they work and how to sell them. I think that my knowledge would be useful in a forum that's centred around these very machines.

Most of the ones that are worth anything will be sold, but I've kept two for personal use; I don't see myself getting rid of them any time soon.



Mower #1 is a 1991 Ariens 911019 Commercial self propelled push mower. I got it for free last may and fixed it up last august. It seemed that after sitting for 5 years the fuel in the carburetor crystallized, and left it beyond repair. I replaced it with one off of a newer Vantage series tecumseh engine, it fit perfectly and even came with a primer (the engine has an inline primer but It doesn't work that well.) I still have some kinks to sort out here in regards to the self propulsion system, but I hope to be using it extensively this season.


Mower #2 is a 1970 MTD Lawn Flite push mower with a backwards-mounted 3.5hp Briggs 92502 engine. This mower is the reason for my screen name, as it belonged to my Great-Grandfather Ike, who gave it to me in september 2009. My parents reluctantly hauled it home on the 700km drive from a small town in Saskatchewan to central Alberta, uncertain of it's future, but the night after we got home my grandpa and I installed a new coil on it and got it to run like a champ! It consumes a little oil when under load, but I'm still going to keep it all original, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.


Well, that's my story so far. I hope to spend many more hours on this forum doing all I can to help people out.

Cheers,
-Rory

[Mark / Ohio]

Welcome to the forum Rory!

[Wayne195]

Greeting Rory,and welcome! We're always glad to have more folks around here with real experiance with lawnmowers!

Enjoy your visits to the forum...

[vjosh]

Well hello there! I would like to drop by and say hi! I am new to the forum as well though have been lurking around for quite a bit already.

As you have said, investing in a good lawn mower is wise considering how you could put it to great use for an extended period of time.

It should be easy to decide on what you should get and I think that you have very well started on that already.

[Austen]

back, Ikes-Mower!

That is really cool that you fix mowers up and sell them for a profit. It's a neat feeling fixing something up and bringing it back to life again.

Thanks for sharing your own personal collection with us as well! I especially like your Lawn Flite mower. That is really neat and has a cool design to it. I bet it's a lot of fun to use as well. I kind of have a similar story about a vintage machine that got me into the antique mowers and like you, wouldn't sell that mower for anything!

Hope you to see you stick around!