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

Simplicity now has gone and screwed up a perfectly reliable snowblower.Not only did they add electric chute rotator to the Large frame model; the chute deflector is also electrically controlled.Cant they just keep it simple?When your trying to clear a driveway in 30 degree temps,you dont need the doodads and the doohickeys not working.I guess B&S has a different plan than the original owner.I guess some of us just got our machines in time before they started farting them up.Hooray for the gizmos.........

aa335 wrote:
I hear you on expensive hobbies. Since I've started racing the word "expensive" has taken on a whole new meaning.

I use both of my 2 stroke lawn boys regularly - I just wash and wax them when I'm done ;) They work flawlessly - if you could still buy them I probably wouldn't be so fussy about keeping them nice, but as they're a dying breed and I get so much enjoyment from mowing with them, I don't mind putting in the extra effort. I have a Snapper Hi-Vac that I use for bagging - incredibly awesome, heavy duty mower.

I'd love to have a bricktop as well - very simple and light mowers with alot of character. Hard finding a decent one though that doesn't require a total restoration.

I use a Husqvarna riding mower to do most of my yard but use a twenty year old Echo self propelled mower to do the trimming. For many years, I used the Echo to do the entire lawn which is of considerable size (.5 acre+). Due to the slope of the front lawn and the ridiculous price of mowers with pressurized oil systems (at the time), I opted for a two stroke engine. The Echo has a 140 cc engine and with factory settings, makes 4.5 h.p. at 2800 rpm. Power is fine at that setting but the self propulsion was a bit too slow for me. I adjusted the governor to give me more engine rpm to help pick up the speed. Now I have a throttle range of 1600 to 4500 rpm which gives the mower much more speed and power. Once the engine is warmed up, there's very little, if any, smoke from the exhaust.

Two strokes are indeed a wonderful engine design. Simplicity, flexible power, light weight and reliability.... What more could one really ask for? How about resuming modern two stroke manufacturing and technology development for OPE applications? After all, Bombardier's Evinrude/Johnson outboards and Skidoo snow machines use very advanced fuel injected two cycle engines that easily out-perform equivalent four stroke engines of equal displacement.