OutdoorKing Repair Forum Forums Repairs and Maintenance Questions on Walk Behind Lawn Mower Frames Victa Lawn Mower Frames VICTA UTILITY ?

Hi, I have what I believe to be a Victa Utility which looks the same as one pictured by jam2727 post 10338 on 30/11/08. I only know these as the toe cutters and they are good for trimming around posts as the blades come right to the right hand edge. mine is the same color orange and has an early 160 motor. I also have the remnants of a 125 version of the same mower but it has a cowl with the fuel tank at the front under the cowl and is painted a hamertone green and has UTILITY sticker across the front vertical surface othewise the frame is the same with the exception that the muffler exits through the base whereas the old one had a muffler that mounted along the side of the motor and was shaped like a fish tail. My orange one is fitted with an early 160 mounted N-S and I have fitted the cowl from the 125 to it, the only mods , removing some of the tin work under the cowl to clear the decomp and the 2 straps that mounted on to 2 of the head studs.
My problem is I cannot get the height adjuster to stay where I set it. I have changed the slotted gate from the old one and retensioned the lever but the vibration sends the adjusting lever into a wild sideways motion and flicks the ratchet out of mesh resulting in a bare patch of ground.
Are there any mods to stop this happening short of tying a bit of rope to the other side. The 125 never did this in the 15 years before its engine demise.
TIA,
Don...
South West Victoria.

Hi , in my previous post I made reference to a post by jam2727, the post number was wrong it should have been 10337 on the 30/11/08.
TIA
Don....

Hi Don, maybe a cable tie (albeit a strong one) could get you out of trouble in the short term....just secure the offending lever at the correct height and zip it up round the lever and the right hand upright of the handle.

Chances are the rotating parts are fairly seriously out of balance. Does it have a blade plate or just a long, single blade? If it has a blade plate, try removing the blades and their attaching hardware completely and see if the balance (that is, vibration level) improves. If it does, replace all the blades and their attaching hardware with a new, full set. If it has a long single blade, remove it and set it horizontally on the shaft of a screwdriver held horizontal. If one end drops lower than the other, grind back the sharpened cutting edge at the end of the heavy end until it balances.

as to the height adjustment having a mind of its own I hhave had several of these mowers, all have had this issue at one oint or anotyher, it is often caused by the lever losing its spring tensoin to flick back after you pull it out to adjust height, best fixI have had if I couldnt find new parts was to hold it there with wire or a cable tie.

If it's a design fault, the only solution is a design change. You can raise the resonant frequency either by lightening the overhanging part of the lever, or by increasing the spring rate (how quickly the force increases when you bend the lever). If it resonates anywhere in the working speed range of the engine, it won't remain in a stable height-position.

Is the lever fairly long, and does it have a handle on the end of it? Shorten lever or remove handle - possibly both.

Hi, Would one broken off fin on the flywheel cause this much vibration. I have 4 flywheels here and all of them have 1 fin broken off. I dont know how people break them off, maybe I will stick one in the mill and take the opposite one off and clean the remains of the broken one off so they have exactly the same amount left. I have changed the slotted gate and retensioned the arm and it is very definate in its action, it just seems the arm is very springy and it vibrates like mad. My old 125 was the identical set up and it never used to do it and it also had a broken off fin and I used it for 15 years with no problems, I am using the same cutting disk and blades (the blades were new) and the slotted gate from the 125 and the frames are identical except the color of the mower, and the muffler exits through the baseplate rather than alongside the motor.
Many thanks to all and I will go and remove a fin.
Don..

Provided you get the two missing fins exactly opposite each other, it has to help. When you put the flywheel back on and check the vibration, you should make the check I suggested regarding running it with no blades or hardware on the blade plate. You should see whether it improves with each change, and how much. If you can't cure the vibration, you have to redesign the height adjustment lever to move its resonant frequency outside the operating range - but I doubt that will be necessary. Victa's engineers may have had a strange sense of humour when it came to plastic carburetors, but I don't think they were so hopeless that they would have designed a height adjuster that couldn't work.

Hi grumpy, not hard to get the opposite fin seeing there are 20, well its done and I will try it tomorrow night and if it works good, if it doesn't of with the blades and try again. there was no problem with this disk and blades on the old 125. Yes after pulling one of those plastic carbys apart yesterday for the hell of it , strange sense of humor is not the description I would use, a demented nut case I think would be more like it but they did work!, I only wanted the throttle cable. The motor that it was on squeaked when you turned it, it was another refugee of the flood here on Dec 9th and was still full of water as were all 4 of these that I collected 2 of which are now going very well, One of them (Grass catcher) I just slipped the barrel off and upended it and tipped the water out and bolted it together again, cleaned and reset the points and emptied the water out of the carby and went and mowed all of my grass and it is a ripper,starts first pull. the other one that you helped me with, got new seals and a blowout and it goes ok as well but doesn't pull as well as the other one so as soon as funds permit I will get from the online shop a reco barrel and piston and put that on the third motor which is a late 160 and take the 2nd 160 thats down a bit off to use for a totally non mower application and put the new one in its place on the toe cutter for the long grass with a piece of conveyer belting across the back to stop rocks clobbering me in the rough stuff then I better stop collecting them and melt down all the scrap alloy to use in the workshop, stack the wheels and axles in a corner for who knows what and relax for a while after learning a lot about Victas and 2 strokes and get a fixed throttle setup going for another project , the 4th motor and all the squeaky bits in a box in the back shed, above the water line for who knows what. Will let you know the outcome of the self adjusting height adjuster.
Many thanks,
Don....

For the height adjuster i would go with the good old okky strap.


Cheers, Bob.

Hi Bob, That would do the trick mate, but I now have an issue with okky straps....A retired Air Force mate of mine was securing something with a okky when one of the hook ends let go...his wife was standing nearby and the hook end tore her left eye clean out, severing the optic nerve. She now has a glass eye.
I have got rid of all of them....straight in the bin! IMO they are bloody dangerous especially as they get older.

Thats sad for your mates wife.

Yes, they must be treated with respect.
Never over extended and replaced regularly.

I have had good success with them. But then i am very efficent with ropes and restraints so i never ask something of an okky strap that it will not do.


Bob.

HI, and sorry to hear of the okky accident, I dont trust them either.

grumpy, removing the fin to "balance things up" did nothing, so now I am going to try and graft one of the Plastic 1/2 round notchy things from one of the other carcases to it, it looks more substantial, if? the plastic will stand up to it!
Regards,
Don....

PS removing blades did nothing either, it still unlatches.

Hi Don, it's definitely a vibration/balance problem, but with all you've done so far you would think that it would be getting better ie. flywheel and blade disc...there must be something that we are missing tho for the life of me I can't think what would cause this handle to vibrate so violently.
Don, please keep us posted, mate.

Hi All, more on the saga of the self adjusting adjuster. Ii would appear that the piece of metal that is riveted to the bottom of the arm no longer has the strength that it originally had and that combined with the wear in the ratchet and the teeth that engage it are worn to the point that very little movement is required for it to jump out of mesh and it with the wear on the edges of the teeth just skips past until it hits the lowest setting and I have another bald patch and a stalled motor. The way it is made I dont think it is worth trying to strengthen the riveted spring so I will continue to attempt to fit one of the real notchy plastic quadrants along with its round shaped arm.

Next question blades and bolts. On the second drop today it found 1/2 a brick and when I looked underneath one blade had lost about half of the turned up bit. So down to the hardware store and found that the blades that were on it were the wrong ones, they were for a grass catcher model, so I got some for a non grass catcher Victa CA09262S and they said to match with BOLT SET B, I can find no listing for bolt set B. The bolts for my mower have big square heads that lock against the inside of the disk and I have 4 of these disks, all good, and the blades and disks have round holes in them for the bolts then there is a thin washer with 3 little turned up bits followed by a heavy washer with a hex hole in the centre and then the nyloc nut.

All of my mowers use the same disks (like a wok), the catcher one has catcher blades and works well. The only bolts the hardware store can provide look like they fit in a somewhat diamond shaped hole in the disk an I was told thats all there is!, the others dont exist any more!!! And I cant be sure what the correct number is I think it could be CA09305 S, is this likely to be the correct one? I got this number from a list on this site. The problems of living in the bush!!!!!
Thanks ,
Don.....

Hi All, Well I have fixed the problem of self adjusting height. I put the rear axle complete with adjuster from the old 125 under it and the thing is as solid as a rock. The spring at the base of the adjuster arm on the old 125 one is thicker and has much more tension than the one that has been giving trouble and is very definate in its engagement, also there is very little vibration of the lever in the sideways direction. All in all a most satisfying fix, and it is only 10 thou thicker and needs about 5 times the force to move it.
Thanks to All who have helped. All I need now is to sort out tne correct blade bolts so that I can stop using 2nd hand bolts.
Thanks,
Don....

blade bolts

if you click there you can find the blade bolts you are looking for....

Good to see you got the height adjuster sorted out.