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Lawn and garden equipment repair

The 'Chickanic' website and YouTube channel by Bre is an excellent resource for learning how to repair all sorts of lawn and garden equipment. Bre and her husband run a high-volume repair shop where they repair mowers, string trimmers, blowers, chainsaws, tillers, and more, but she also offers lots of detailed and valuable information for the DIY'er. Her tag line is "saving you time, money and frustration".

My name is Bre. I took two years of small engine repair at the local college. When I left school, I fell into a wonderful job at a local small engine shop where I worked the counter for a couple years. In 2010 my husband and I opened up our own small engine shop in central Arkansas where I am able to work alongside my family and best friends. We saw over 2,000 pieces of small engine equipment every year, and answer 1,000's of small engine questions. We specialize in brands such as Briggs and Stratton, Kohler, Echo and Shindaiwa, but work everyday on MANY other brands like Stihl, Husqvarna, Honda, Craftsman, Remington, Red Max, Troy Bilt, Scag, Bad Boy, Hustler, World Lawn, Poulan, Mantis, Etc.. Hopefully, my experience I share, will save you Time, Money and Frustration in the future!

After watching many of Bre's videos, a very common problem with these small engines is, as i suspected, fuel related. As far as i'm aware, every gas station in the U.S. sells fuel having ethanol in it and the alcohol oxidizes aluminium carburetors, clogging up the ports and causing general havoc. While the manufacturers tell us that running gasoline containing a given percentage ethanol is acceptable, it is not a good idea, especially if you use your equipment only a few times a year or less, or fail to properly winterize it for the off-season. Finding a source for ethanol-free fuel, aka "rec gas" or "recreational gas", is always your best bet. Another common problem is water in the fuel which, again, is often related to ethanol because alcohol absorbs moisture from the air and does so very quickly, so if you're storing gas containing ethanol, at least keep it in a tightly sealed container. Lastly, many people use premixed, canned fuel in their 2-stroke engines and though this may be convenient, canned fuel is often garbage and can reduce performance according to Bre. Here's some tips regarding fuel for 2-stroke engines:

  • Avoid fuel containing ethanol if at all possible. If you can't source ethanol-free gas, add a high quality fuel stabilizer which is formulated specifically for gasoline containing ethanol. Both Ethanol Shield and Star Tron Enzyme Fuel Treatment seem to be highly recommended.
  • Buy fuel in small quantities and store it in airtight containers.
  • Use a high quality 2-stroke oil when mixing your gas.
  • At the end of the season, always drain the fuel from your equipment and then run it until it stops running. Finally, add something to the fuel tank, such as some 2-stroke oil, and thoroughly prime the carburetor to prevent the diaphragms from hardening. I've been dumping some WD-40 in my saw and trimmer tanks and this seems to work fine, plus the engine is easy to start the next season given that WD-40 burns, however i cannot say that using WD-40 is the proper thing to do and, if you do this, expect a lot of smoke when you start your engine in the Spring until the WD-40 is burned off. I think one could use Sea Foam as well which also works spectacularly to eliminating carbon build-up.

Another problem that is quite common is carbon build-up on the spark arrestor screen which is attached to the muffler. Many people choose to remove the screen, however if carbon is that much of a problem, it's time to use some Sea Foam to clean out the carbon. Running a 2-stroke engine at low throttle can contribute to carbon build-up, but sometimes it's impossible to avoid this. If you're forced to run a string trimmer at low RPM because of what you need to trim, run it at full throttle for a minute or so after you're done.

You can use yt-dlp to create a list of all of Bre's videos from which you can search for any problem you may be having with your small engine. The following will create an HTML document:

$ printf '%s\n' '<ul>' > 'chickanic.txt'

$ yt-dlp --flat-playlist --print-to-file '<li>%(title)s (<a href="%(url)s">link</a>)</li>' 'chickanic.html' 'https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-tQIeakd3uaiAAwjYHSy9Q'

$ printf '%s\n' '</ul>' >> 'chickanic.html'

To create a text list, run the following:

$ yt-dlp --flat-playlist --print-to-file '%(title)s (%(url)s)' 'chickanic.txt' 'https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-tQIeakd3uaiAAwjYHSy9Q'