Gasket?

It’s a bit overcast today but still warm, around 27°c, so we decided to get a few garden jobs done. Brian wanted to get the slope cut with the ancient mower that had come with the house. So after we had pulled it up the steps and up onto the slope, we decided to see if it still worked. A couple of pulls on the starter cord and it rumbled into action. Hoorah… smiles all round. It ran for a couple of minutes, gurgling as it went, then silence. Blast, I’d had a feeling we needed a new one.

However, Brian, not to be defeated, decided to take a look and find out what might be wrong. As I’d so wisely said ‘not much to go wrong on a lawn mower engine’. So he bravely went and got his socket set, and some WD40 and started to undo the bolts for the filter.
He soon found a problem with a damaged gasket. That is right up his street, cutting out a perfect copy of something. This he did with ease. But still not sure all was well, he proceeded to clean the moving parts to ensure everything moved freely. Brian really has never dabbled with engines before, and I thought that was all he was doing, however he carefully put it all back together with its newly made gasket and pulled the cord. Then ‘putt, putt put, putt’ - it started to purr into life. At last we can take back control of the garden.