Outdoor Power Equipment (Lawn Mowers, Snow Blowers, Chain Saws and more) Discussions

Hi guys.  I bought my first mower last year and got some good advice from you guys on it last year.  My mower ran well all last year and before i put it away for winter i changed the oil.  I ran Chevron Delo 15w40 in it all summer and then changed it out to Mobil 1 10w30 before storage.  I get some fresh fuel and pull it out for it's first use.  I never started it after the oil change last fall.  It starts after quite a few pulls and starts smoking heavily.  It's burning oil while i let it warm up and continued to do so.  I start mowing after about a minute and it's still really smoking.  I began to worry the the rings were worn and that it was burning oil because of the thinner oil.  Well, after about 5 minutes of mowing it clears right up and stops smoking.  Do you think i could have overfilled the crank case with oil and it just burnt off the excess?  or do you think the engine had to warm up fully to seal off the piston rings?  The mower runs well and seems to have good power.  It's a 91 honda hr215hx .  Any ideas?

It might just have been that you overfilled it. I have done that in the past with the same results. I doubt that anything happened to the rings over the winter nor do I think that a different weight of oil would cause that.

Likley just an overfill situation.