OutdoorKing Repair Forum Forums General Discussion Forum Off Topics Winter Maintenance....What do you do?

Hi to All,
Winter is fast approaching and it's a good time to carry out routine and preventative maintenance on our outdoor power equipment, to have everything sorted by the start of Spring. What are you going to do?

On my good mower for out the front (victa powertorque 2 stroke)

- Replace blades x4
- Grease up the wheel bearings
- new air/fuel filter
- new fuel lines
- replace battery (yep I am that lazy I use a keystart one

On the scrub basher I use for my backyard and dads place (viking utility with 3.5hp briggs

- change oil
- grease wheels
- maybe blades
- clean and reoil air filter
- clean up the plug.

on the mornington peninsular where i am there is no time that the grass isn't growing! its never hot enough to completely kill it and the sunny days every now and then in winter keep it growing. i mowed foot high grass today that i only did 2 weeks ago.
so anyway generally, on the decent equipment, they get a oil change, spark plug clean, head removed and de-coked with a new head gasket,valve lash for O.H.V and clean the air filter. the ride on gets the drive cone adjusted and the belts tightened.
as to all the s#!tty mowers they get nothing, maybe the oil i drained out of the car or truck if its any better than whats already in there.
good topic DJ
regards jay

My mower and edger run 1.5 hours per year each. Winter maintenance consists of ignoring them. Following the B&S instructions would mean an oil change for each every 33 years, but I'll probably do it more often than that.

So far as fuel is concerned, I ensure there is no ethanol in it, and don't worry about how old it is. The last six months or so I've been using a jerry-can of red petrol that a guy gave me, saying it was "very old" and he didn't know if it would be any good after all this time. Seems to be winter fuel - higher vapour pressure than summer fuel - but otherwise indistinguishable from modern unleaded. I do remove all fuel from my line trimmer (because it is a two-stroke) and my spare mower (because hopefully it won't be used for ten years or more). I also gave the spare an oil change immediately before storing it.