Riding mower mods
 

First mod was a string. A baling string I found in my field plus a hole I drilled in the discharge flap that allows me to lift up the grass discharge flap to clear the cut grass so the blades to cut better, faster and put the flap down when the wind blows the grass and dust back at me.

I got a newer than 2010 craftsman riding mower as a pile of parts for next to nothing. A 46 inch single cylinder 19hp machine. I assembled the parts and it works.
Only lasting problem is the carb floods with gas, a bad O-ring allows gas to leak past the needle valve, I just need a carb rebuild kit so I can replace the offending O-ring.
Rebuild kit should be here today, so I'll see if it came in in the next day or 2.
If it still seems like it runs rich I'll get the "high altitude jet" that I found while searching for the rebuild kit.
It already gets much better fuel economy than my older 42 inch 18.5hp V-twin that drinks gas but the plugs last 2 or 3 years so I don't think it's running real rich.

The 19hp has plenty of power, it can easily shred the deck belt if I push it too hard, a $30 oopsie. So of course it totally makes sense to do mods that give it more power. I don't like smelling gasoline exhaust and pm2.5 soot is supposed to be really bad for you causing the side effects of one of those new medications. The ideal pipe for a 540cc 1cyl engine that spins 3,500rpm is a 1 inch ID pipe that is 5 feet long. Probably can't do 5 feet. But I could do a stack and get 3 to 4 feet of pipe on there. I have lots of 1 inch diameter, 0.062 inch wall 304 stainless steel pipe to use. So that works out good.

To use that power I will investigate the possibility of upgrading from a 1/2 to a 5/8 inch belt, it looks like a 5/8 will fit on the existing pulleys.

Bigger tires might be nice, the tallest deck setting is almost too low and 2 notches down out of 5 and the deck is on dragging on the ground. Taller tires would allow me to go faster not necessary but fun and should make a for a better ride over bumpy ground and cut the field grass higher.

If it sat with fuel In it, the bleed air hole in the carb main fuel tube may have corroded smaller by just a bit.

I have taken it apart, I don't know if the factory buggered up the O-ring or the last guy who put it together did it.

New mod, over driving the blades to about 4,000rpm. It seems to work very well.
I don't have other people around so when a blade breaks no problem.

How often do you break a blade? I never have, even on the rocky property I owned.

If you run them long enough they will break.
It's actually really difficult to break one.
I ran some blades all the way to failure just to see what it would take.

I hit a rock about the size of a golf ball, nothing super hard, kind of a decomposed lime stone. Well blades spinning at 4,000 rpm have no mercy. The rock was pulverized with 3 hits that sounded like 1 and left 3 nice chips taken out of my blade. I filled them in with L56 wire and CO2, the damage was not in line with where blades are known to crack and break.
Definitely worse damage than normal speed blades.

Definitely getting accelerated wear on the blades at 4,000rpm.

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Higher rpm leads to more air being moved lifting dirt, sand and debris causing excessive wear and not from the act of cutting grass. Usually it’s the wings on the back edge of the blade that produce lift that wear out first. I had the same problem and corrected it by raising the deck a little higher. Blades now last nearly a full season. I even tried hard facing the blades but it wore out next to and in between the welds. Since raising the deck my grass is healthier, looks better and is more drought resistant.


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Definitely a different and odd wear pattern.https://ecomodder.com/forum/attachme...1&d=1631831881

I'll switch be blades between sides and I'll grind off the lift wings and re ballance.

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Yup, that’s exactly what it looks like when sand & dirt start eating at the blade. Raising the deck a 1/2”-3/4” will cure most, if not all of that. The wings are necessary. If you grind the wings off, it will not produce lift or a satisfactory cut.

I know, I tried... 😐

Just buy new blades, raise the deck and you’ll be happy.


p.s.

I cut 6 acres.


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Oh I always have spare blades on hand.
I'll try to weld them up, maybe get a little more use out out of them.

The spare blades sound like an opportunity for cryonic tempering.

If you can do the tips one at a time, you'd only need to boil off maybe a quart of liquid nitrogen.

Heat treatment doesn't really seem to help with abrasive wear.

That's why you use cold treatment.

I did my brake drums and rotors based on reading about how it is popular with police department maintenance shops and racers. It can extend the parts service life 3 or 4x.

I built up some blades with L56 wire, the L56 wires appears to be more resistant to wear than the 1040 alloy the blades are made from.
So my idea build up worn blades with L56, homogenize, forge and heat treat them.
Also I can smell the exhaust so I put a tractor style straight pipe that's about 5 feet long on the riding mower.
These 19.5Hp engines run a bit hot and the head gaskets are known to pop, warping the head. Not scavenging the exhaust can cause an engine to run hot, pop head gaskets and what not.

Damascus steel lawn mower blades?

Damascus steel is overkill.
Plus I would have to get the length right, put holes in the right spots, plus Damascus would probably be too hard and would want to crack.

How about adding The wrinkly welded on stuff found on earth moving equipment buckets and scoops added for anti-wear?

Hard edge or tack? I know you have the welding equipment.

It's called hard facing and there's 2 types. Homogeneous and non-homogeneous.
Homogeneous uses high alloy with chromium, tungsten and manganese makes an incredibly hard weld for impact applications.
Non-homogeneous uses chonky chromium carbide crystals for maximum abrasion resistance but has terrible impact resistance.
I already tried that. It works superbly on brush shredder blades since they are like 5/8 of an inch thick and don't flex. And not so well on lawn mower blades. The homogeneous weld cracks under normal use on mower blades, the Crack propagates and breaks the blade.
But I have used laser-edge blades where the blades use chromium carbide brazed on the the blade before the blade is heat treated, those are awesome, but not available for my 48 inch mower.

See post 20
https://ecorenovator.org/forum/showt...+faster&page=2
I may try to recreate my own laser-edge blades.

New lawn mower eco mod. I installed the correct high altitude jet in the riding mowers Nikki carb.
Now idles faster since the air fuel ratio is pretty close to being correct and it idles longer when I shutoff the fuel.
I can also smell it burning off the carbon inside the combustion chamber.
Ultimate ecomod to the carb would be to put on a Honda style carb.

I have been using the high altitude jet for a while now, fuel consumption is definitely down engine power is up. If I set the half turn adjustable air bleed open too much the engine wants to stall so it's right where it needs to be.