OutdoorKing Repair Forum Forums Finding and Swapping Tip & Curb Side Finds Bought a dump mower for 20 bucks and it goes!!

I spotted a Rover Baron mower at the tip yesterday. I'd been looking for a spring and governor attachment in good condition and this one fit the bill perfectly. So I paid the guy $20, took it home and started looking it over. My first thought was this mower looked too good to pull apart for spare parts. It had clearly done very little work and with a clean up it would almost look brand new. It looked like it would go.

Second I tested for spark and found plenty. Took the old plug out and put in a new one. Checked the oil, which was full but VERY dirty. I'm sure it still had the same oil in it since the time it was purchased.

Looked underneath and pulled the equivalent of a bail of dried straw and grass from under the deck and around the blade disk. The blades very worn and one broken. The grass must have been very wet and someone had just left it dry under there, so it had turned into a caked-on mass. No way this mower would have ever started until all that packed grass was scraped out from underneath.

I put some fuel in and gave it one pull and away it went. Not smoking, purring away like new. Idles well, and the throttle picks up well.

I am going to take the engine off and give it a good clean. Got the pressure hose to the base and it came up like new. Snorkel was the only thing broken, so I fitted a new one. I might have to buy a new air filter. Cleaned out the fuel tank and it had lots of grass and dirt in it. I will have to flush out the oil a couple times.

But I am really amazed to find a mower in such good condition, just suffering from obvious neglect. Some people really make me wonder. Are they too damn lazy to bend down and clean out the grass from underneath? Don't they care about changing the oil or checking the plug every now and then? It almost seems to me that someone has really pushed this mower through some extremely high grass in wet weather to the point that they have completely choked and clogged the base and the mower has stalled. Then they couldn't turn the mower over so dumped it. They've probably gone out and bought a new one and sent this perfectly good mower to the tip when all it needed was a bit of basic maintenance. LOL!

The sad thing is they probably bought one of the new Chinese mowers. I am already seeing LOTS of SANLI mowers in the recycling store at the tip, which obviously says something. They still look new, but in most cases when I've tried them, they won't go. I'm not sure if the electronics are no good on them or what the story is, but they seem very prone to failure after only a short while. They are not like the robust and usually reliable old Rover with their Briggs and Stratton motors!!

I find the Sanli isn't too bad, usually a carby clean fixes them up, if not I put on a new $10 carby. Usually the ones I get don't have a catcher so I fit a Victa rear flap and then you use a Victa catcher and they are fine

Good work Ian, a pic would be great. Does it have a catcher? Good tip with the Sanli Norm, I picked up a good looking one from the roadside and replaced the carb and coil. I was glad to sell that one on in the end, good solid base and the engine seems good. It�s just everything else that bolts on is rubbish.

The base is certainly vastly superior to the Victa steel base with their insistence on sticking to the top mounting handles with a single bolt each side, hastening metal fatigue and corrosion, not to mention that awful flexing feel when you push the mower around.

Hi Paul c,

This is much the same for the Talon mowers which have a great base but a rubbish engine that's loosely based around the 1980's Briggs engine but made out of really soft metal thus the valves hammer the seats in something ridiculous, thus rapidly losing compression.

Cheers,
BB.

Rolls Royce bases with Cherry engines.

Paul with the Victa rear flap, the Victa hinges butt up to the rear of the Sanli handle brackets and use the Victa spacing so it is an easy setup

Hi Paul, No catcher. They want as much for the catchers as the mower itself, and I can share the catcher off my old one. Okay, I'll get a pic when it cools down. Bit hot out there at present. Both me and the camera might melt. lol!

Exactly my thoughts too Mowerfreak. Or maybe like a Sherman tank base with a Morris Marina engine.

Gardener's choice seems another cheapy with a good base and troublesome Chonda (due to carby).Neither of our respective analogies are water tight. From what I've read, the Chery is reliable enough and the engine was the least of the Marina's worries. It was based on the proven Morris Minor's engine. Modest performance but did the job okay.
But we get the drift...

Here you go Paul, some photos. I went back to the tip yesterday, rummaged through their pile of broken catchers in 40+ degree heat and scored a good catcher for it. Only problem was it was right down the bottom of the pile and full of red-back spiders. They were packed into nearly every corner and crevice! I think the lady at the shop felt sorry for me. Only charged me $5. No extra charge for deadly spiders! I gave the car boot a good fumigate when I got home and killed all the red-backs (about 6 all up), then got to work cleaning it with the pressure hose. I only found one minor break on one of the plastic lugs, which was easy to fix with a pop rivet.

So here it is, the Rover Baron. I had a big roll of electrical confluit here, so I used some of that to make up a snorkel. Not sure how it will go, but it is very tough material. Probably stronger than the original. I only had to buy a spark plug, an air filter for $5, a new set of blades, a can of liquid degreaser to clean it, and 600 ml of oil. A mate is sending me a Rover badge for the front.

Now isn't that much more rewarding than splurging on a Bunnings special? far superior quality as well.

I guess the only draw back is that it's now a $200 mower while the junk at Bunnings is $400 upwards but will fall apart in no time as the thin plastic fails, while yours is all metal apart from the catcher.

Just isn't right is it ?

We are going to have a similar situation to the hire bikes where the landscape will be littered with these odious China built throwaway mowers.
Why do the Chinese make too much stuff that doesn't last? it's a drain on resources, something China is a champion at.

To answer that is too easy MF China doesn't care what we think their main aim is to crush manufacturing worldwide and then they will have financial control of the world. Our stuff going to landfill is music to their ears

Yes, I am sure this mower will outlast half a dozen of those Chinese-made ones from Bunnings. I am betting the individual who clogged this perfectly good mower up with grass until it stalled went straight into Bunnings after he dumped it. Well I guess I have to thank him for his laziness in a way.

The Chinese must really laugh at us Australians, all the way to their banks. We are such a wasteful society, and we fail to realize that the Chinese economic powerhouse is what is driving our crazy throwaway society. This must one day end because we are living way beyond our means in this country. Such waste is entirely unsustainable but SO MANY Australians just can't see the writing on the wall.

I am in fact convinced the Chinese laugh at us while stealing our money. We send them our prime coal. They send us back mostly inferior materials designed to stop working or break just so we have to go back to the stores and buy more of the same. I recall when men's fashions changed in this country a decade or two ago, the shape and fit of clothing really went downhill. All of a sudden the pants became really loose and baggy, which looked totally ridiculous on a man of thin build. Men got around looking like a bunch of clowns or beach bums in my opinion. I gave up trying to modify what was available in the clothing stores and started shopping for secondhand clothing from the good old days. I am sure I must look like a walking anachronism to many of the younger generation, but I laugh at them because they seem totally oblivious to how silly they look.

Hi VM,

It's not just the Chinese that are laughing at us, it's also the business owners in this country as well. Sadly building long lasting items is no longer viable as the repeat business doesn't come in the door and keep the higher costs of keeping a business going.

Don't get me wrong, I to am a great supporter of repairing rather than throwing out, gosh that's why I'm here in the first instance, but it's the pure greed that's driving this economy of build, buy, destroy.

Cheers,
BB.

Without a car industry anymore, we are nothing. Hold onto your Aussie made items, because, believe me, they will be worth their weight in gold from frenzied people utterly desperate to get their parasitic claws in anything manufactured in Australia down the line.
It's already happening with formerly common old bombs like Holden Kingswood and Toranas fetching ludicrous sums.
The hunger for Australiana from the 70s and 80s and even later will be insatiable in coming years.
You won't need a Victa Twin for your mower to be sought after. More and more people are after old mowers to do up and it isn't restricted to 18s anymore.
I am not interested in getting instant money for my mowers. I just want to be able to have them!