OutdoorKing Repair Forum Forums General Discussion Forum OutdoorKing Showcase Some Of My Atco Mowers

As promised some picture of the Atco mowers that one of my clients gave to me. I have since checked the motors on both and guess what they per like kittens.

I will take a video and upload them to the forum soon.

Hey, what a great looking machine, luxury lawn type gear. Can you show us the cutters as well! Are they sharp! Cheers.

Bruce, what a perfect pair!! The second machine is the same model I owned many years ago and gave me hours of fun tinkering.....Can't wait to see the video!!

The little one looks like one I had about 30 years ago. It wasn't running when I bought it - some amateur had pulled the flywheel cover and thrown it away, messed up the moving breaker arm, loosened the flywheel thus losing the timing, then gave up and sold it to me for not much. Wasn't hard to fix, but as I recall it took a while to get the ignition to a reasonable standard. You have to end up with the points breaking at the point of maximum change in magnetic flux, which also has to be just before top dead center. In the end spark was nothing to write home about, and the 18 mm spark plug was too expensive to replace so I cleaned it and kept it. The outcome of all that was it usually took six to eight kicks to cold-start it, but after that it ran very well - vastly better than the Victa of the day. I did find, though, that I had to leave the roller drive chain in place. I'd have preferred to hand-push it for better manoeuvrability, but it needed the extra load on the engine to make it 2-stroke nicely.

I will be getting the cylinder & bottom blade sharpened in the next month or so and also repainting them once I get the new decals.

Do you know how the fixed blade will be sharpened? The cylindrical blade is easily sharpened by turning between centers on a lathe, but the fixed blade is more difficult to handle because it is so springy. Attaching it to a special fixture and surface-grinding seems like the answer, but you'd need a fairly serious set-up to do that.