Good morning,

This weekend, I wrecked my Honda Lawn mower and I wanted to present the details to the community hoping to get feedback on whether or not it's likely worth the time and money to even consider repair.

While mowing, I ran the mower over the remnants of what I believe used to be a post for a basketball goal. Now, it's essentially a steel cylinder roughly a few inches high filled with concrete.

The blade struck the object and the mower stopped immediately. I removed the blade and mounting bracket to expose the shaft that spins the blade and runs directly up into the engine.

Now, instead of running straight down perpendicular to the mower deck and the ground, the shaft is bent about 15 degrees. This is causing metal on metal friction and subsequent, violent shaking when I start the engine.

So, my question is do y'all think this would be worth the expense to even have the damage assessed considering the problem? I'm guessing the part can be replaced, but the entire engine would need to be disassembled to get to it.

The mower was about $350 new, I believe so I certainly don't want to go near that price point. If it's that bad, I'll just buy a new one... Thoughts or suggestions?

Thank you in advance.

 

A few years ago my mother developed the hobby of mowing over cast iron water meter covers, iron pipes and anything else really solid. In one summer she killed three mowers. Just to see if it could be done I straightened the crank and it ran well until she hit something with it again. (this was mower #1, she hit something again after I repaired it for dead engine #3, I also straightened the crank of #2 and got it running but I dye checked the crank and it did develop a crack but I just had to see if I could get it running before recycling it.)

I do not recommend trying to straighten the crank. There may be cracking that could cause the blade to fly off and injure someone. But, in the three engines I've done the only damage was a bend crank shaft and sheered flywheel key. There may be other internal damage in your engine but it is possible to get off easy. Still, the engine must be removed and disassembled to there is a bit of expense. If you can find a good shade tree small engine repairman then it's worth getting their opinion. I would not bother going to the dealer's maintenance shop as their hourly shop rate would probably make it too expensive to repair.

 

Thanks very much for the insight. I really appreciate your confirming my suspicions. I had thought about unseen cracks and/or other internal damage as well.

My Dad has informed me he will no longer be mowing his own lawn simply because he doesn't want to fool with it any longer and, due to his recent hiring of a lawn service, he's told me I am welcome to his lawn mower. Given that this is the free option, I think I'll take it

Any suggestions on what to do with the mower with the bent crank shaft?

 

It's the engine that is the most valuable item on the mower. If you want to try to get some money, it probably won't be more than $25 in that condition. Around here, I'd get rid of it by putting it near the street with a "FREE, Bent crank" sign. Wouldn't last a day.

 

I may call the hardware store to see if they'd be interested in giving me a few bucks for it or post a classified online somewhere... Thanks for the tip.

 

You could scrap it out if so inclined, the steel won't bring much but the aluminum is worth more.

 

I had a friend that did a similar incident to his brand new lawnmower, I replaced the key under the flywheel which got it running again. It wabbled a little, so I took a 3 lb sledge and rotated the crank shaft around until i found which way it was bent to, and proceeded to smack the crank shaft. It worked, but we only had a couple degrees of bend in the shaft.

 

This is one of the reasons why my daddy only bought $100 K-Mart special lawnmowers. Use them until they break and then buy another. I had a friend that paid something like $650 for a Honda lawnmower and then spent about $100 a year in maintaining it.

I'm still using the Black & Decker battery-operated mower I got more than fifteen years ago. Original battery too.

 

I have fixed hundreds of small lawn mowers and will never touch one that has a bent crankshaft, if it is bent the metal is weakened and is going to weaken more when straightened, at some point the blade is going to hit something and break and when that happens there is going to be a mower blade and part of a crankshaft flying through the air at 3,000 rpm. Think about it a minute, is it really worth it. Have a good one. Geo

 

I agree with Geo, not worth the possible consequences.