Troubleshooting common ride-on mower problems on large properties

There’s nothing quite like the hum of a ride-on going on a still morning, especially when you’re trying to tame the jungle pretending to be your front paddock. Being honest about it though, those machines have a knack for picking the worst possible moment to play up. Whether you’re halfway down a fire break or you’ve only just started on the front block, a sudden cough or a clunk or a complete shutdown is enough to have anybody muttering a few creative phrases.

So before you park it in a huff and throw a tarp over it, work through the common faults. Most of them are simple, most of them are cheap, and most of them you can sort yourself.

1. It won’t start at all

You’re ready to mow, the weather’s perfect, and there’s nothing. Silence. When a ride-on doesn’t even try to turn over, it’s usually one of these.

  • Flat battery. Happens far more often than people admit, especially after the machine has sat through winter. A jump starter in the shed saves you the walk and the swearing.
  • Old fuel. Petrol does go stale, and it goes stale faster than most people think. Drain it, refill with fresh, and add a fuel stabiliser if the machine is going to sit for a few months.
  • Loose wiring. Wiggle things, carefully. You’d be surprised how often it’s one connector jiggled loose after a bumpy day around the paddocks.
  • A safety switch. The seat switch, the brake switch and the PTO switch all have to be happy before it will crank at all.

If you’re still stuck after that, pull the spark plug. If it looks worse than your boots after a wet week, put a new one in and gap it to whatever the engine manual says.

2. It starts, then sounds like it’s dying

That wheezy note is not the normal your mower should be making. Choking, spluttering and an engine with no power in it usually mean a blockage somewhere in the fuel line, the air filter or the carburettor. Keeping a clean air filter in it every season fixes more of these than anything else you can do.

Compressed air will blow the dust out of a foam or paper filter, gently, once. Not hammered at it like a fire hose, because you’ll put a hole through the element and then it’s filtering nothing. If it’s oily or collapsed, replace it rather than cleaning it.

3. Cutting unevenly, or not at all

If the paddock ends up looking like a choppy sea rather than flat pasture, the blades are telling you something. They’re either blunt, bent, or packed solid with old grass underneath. A look under the deck answers it in about a minute, with the plug lead off first.

Check the deck level while you’re there, because it’s surprisingly easy to knock out of alignment without noticing. Set the tyre pressures first, then measure blade tip height at the front and the back of the deck. Most decks want a few millimetres of forward rake, and the manual will give you the number for yours.

Blades want to be sharp and they want to be balanced. An out-of-balance blade shakes a spindle to bits over a season, so if you’re sharpening them yourself, take the same amount off each end.

4. Traction or steering trouble

If it’s slipping on inclines or won’t hold a line around the dam, check the tyres first. Uneven pressure is sneakily common and it makes the whole machine feel wrong. Look for wear and bald patches while you’re down there, and keep a tyre gauge in the shed because they cost very little and they save a lot.

Steering gone stiff, or feeling like it’s about to come off in your hands, is usually worn steering bushes or a loose linkage, particularly if the ground you cover is anything but gentle. Catch that early and you save yourself bruised knuckles and a bigger part.

5. The deck won’t engage

You press the button or pull the lever and nothing happens. That is usually one of three things: a faulty PTO switch, a belt that has snapped or jumped off its pulley, or a safety switch doing its job. Check the operator seat switch too, because if the mower thinks you’ve hopped off, the blades will not start no matter how many times you flick anything.

Keep it clean and it keeps running

A lot of ride-on trouble starts with poor cleaning habits. Caked dust, grime under the hood, grass wedged into every corner. Rinse underneath with low pressure water and let it dry properly before you park it up, because moisture sitting in a machine overnight is no friend of rural gear.

And please don’t point a high pressure washer at the engine, the bearings or the electrics. Water gets past seals it has no business getting past, and that turns a cleaning job into a repair job.

When it’s past a Saturday afternoon

Some faults are beyond a home fix and there’s no shame in that. If it’s leaking fluid, rattling like it will come apart, or smelling burnt, stop and get it to a small engine mechanic before you turn a part into a whole machine.

What we can do is the rest of it. We keep the consumables that go wrong first, we’ll talk you through what the symptom probably means, and we run a tool sharpening depot so blades can come in with you. Just let us know what it’s doing and we’ll go from there.

One last thing before you head back out

Next time you’re topping up the property must-haves, think about the boring stuff. Oil, a spare spark plug, an air filter, a tyre gauge, a jump starter. They feel like afterthoughts at the counter and they are the whole difference between a headache and a handled hiccup when something goes wrong 2 kilometres from the shed.

Shop related products

Did you know we also stock Briggs and Stratton air filters, Bynorm starter cords, chain and bar oil, and swing back blade and bolt sets for the common push mowers in the shop. They aren’t all listed online, so give us a ring on (08) 8536 4333 to check what’s on the shelf.

There’s more in our outdoor power equipment range and our automotive range.

Keep reading

I’m self-taught on most of this and I still reach for the manual before the spanner, which has saved me more money than any tool in the shed.

Candeece

Candeece

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