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Collection, Preservation and Display of Old Lawn Mowers

New member, new mower - (well, old mower, but I've just bought it)!!

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Hi.

I am a new member to this forum so I would like to introduce myself.

It's a long story, but basically about 10 years ago I bought a very cheap second hand lawn mower (non runner) to tackle the back garden in my old house which hadn't had anything done for about 3 years. I got it running and it served its purpose very well!!!!!

I then moved to a new house with a garden roughly the size of your average dining room table and this mower became somwhat redundent so I gave it away about a year ago.

Well after considerable nagging from the wife my small area of garden has now been re turfed and I seem to have become obsessed with making it as flat, green and strippy as possible - Maybe it's my age!!

To this end a cylinder mower seemed to be the only way to go, but being one of tightest people on the face of this planet (my dad is a Yorkshireman, so I have northen blood) obviously I didn't want to pay any more than the price of a couple of pints of beer!!

After some considerable searching I realised that I wanted a cylinder mower with a roller. Did not care what make  as long as it was cheap!!

So I took the plunge and found what I took to be an old suffolk punch on eBay, not far from me for the princley sum of £20, bought in a fully working condition with one minor fault being a hole in the exhaust muffler. I should say at this point that I purchased this mower purely as a working tool to cut my back lawn.

I picked it up, started it and cut my new grass to a lovely finish, and then I noticed the remnants of a sticker on the grass box which said "qualcast commodore" so I typed it into google and hey presto, I have found my way to this website.

Firstly I should say thanks for the mower info pages. I really was shocked when I found out that my new mower was made somewhere between 57 and 67!!! Amazing to think that the thing still works brilliantly, doing the job it was made for after around 50 years service!!! Secondly, thanks for the info on the 75G engine. I wish I had this 19 years ago when as a 12 year old boy I decided to strip down and rebuild one of these engines in order to get a better understanding of the finer points of internal combustion engines; but that's another story!

There are a couple of issues with the mower which I will be sorting out, hopefully this weekend and any advice would be apreciated - I have a good understanding of how these things work, but it's always nice to hear from like minded people.

Firstly, the exhaust muffler. I will try to describe the one fitted to the mower. It is a round cylinder with an angled pipe coming from the exhaust port on the engine and the discharge through a little round hole on one end/side. The muffler has a hole it it towards the front and when I look down into the hole it is quite clear that this has been caused by the angle of the pipe inside the muffler (i will try and post a photo).

Question is, I have found the little square box type muffler assembly on eBay for a few pounds, complete with the boss, gasket and bolt. Will this fit straight onto my new mower???

Next question relates the the mower running on tick over, which it does quite happily for a few minutes and then suddenly cuts out. I think that I should be able to sort this out with adjustment of the pilot air screw but once again, any advice would be appriciated. In general, the carb looks as though it has seen better days and could do with a good going over - and I suppose that after 50 years or so service I have to expect that there will be a certain amount of wear on the carb which will affect the general runing of the engine. Is there a service kit available for this type of carb?? I would be reluctant to strip it down without having a new gasket at the very least !!!!

Once agin thatks for all the info on the site and I look forward to any replies. Hopefully i'll catch up with some members - if there's ever a show in my neck of the woods, i'll be sure to pay a visit and sey hello.

In the mean time, happy mowing!!

Paul.

Aled Fri, 13/05/2011

Hi Paul

Suffolk Punch's of that age are very popular and when they're running they're very nice and usable mowers. The exhaust fault you seem to mention sounds like a crack in the exhaust, I think these are known as Briggs exhaust, as they closely resemble (perhaps even manufactured by Briggs) thier exhausts. Don't quote me on this but I'm fairly certain as long as you can get the existing exhaust off the engine block you can fit up one of the reproduction ones from eBay. The reproduction ones are clones of the exhaust from a later type Suffolk engine.

Cheers

Aled