OutdoorKing Repair Forum Forums Repairs and Maintenance Questions on Engines Questions On Briggs & Stratton Engines Briggs Fuel Tank - Half Full of Oil!

I bought an old Rover Challenger from the tip on the weekend. When I got it home I was surprised to find the fuel tank was half full of oil. I've seen some strange things done to tip mowers, but this takes the cake. I can't see how the oil could have got in there unless someone has put it in there, perhaps by mistake. I guess that would explain why it ended up at the tip. The other odd thing is the sump was completely empty. It almost looks as though someone has poured 600ml of oil into the fuel tank instead of the sump!

The engine otherwise has good spark and compression.

Should I clean the tank and carby thoroughly before trying to start the engine? Or would a quick drain be enough? I really only want to see if it will go. I'm guessing if the tank is filled with petrol this will dilute any oil that has pooled in the carby and manifold. Plug was very dirty - coated with a thick blob of dried oil.

Hopefully with the oil in the tank they were not able to start it. If they did not know where to put the oil I doubt the would have known how to drain it. What motor is on it? I assume a vertical pull Briggs, if so I would pull the tank/carb put some petrol in it and give it a good shake, drain it and put it back on and give it a try, might need a teaspoon of petrol down the carby throat

It's a Briggs 3 HP (or 3.5 HP?) with a side pull, but it is the older type of engine which was painted orange. I actually never knew they made the side pulls for Briggs back then. I thought they only came in during the 80s. Clearly I was wrong. I might have to pull the head gasket off first, as the plug was virtually caked in gunk. It might need a good clean out. I'm not sure what someone was thinking. Well obviously they weren't thinking too clearly. The oil is really odd too. It almost looks and smells like gear oil to me! The oil was very clean suggesting it was poured in there fairly recently. I remember somebody mentioned an old tip mower they got which had paint in the sump, so I guess gear oil in the fuel tank is marginally better than that?

I hope you are not paying much for these tip mowers, I have only been to our tip shop once and I could not believe what they were asking for just absolute rubbish, that only the scrap man could love

Hey NormK, Australians expect gold for their used wares, but act they are doing you a favour by offering nix for your stuff. It's a one way street with most.

MF you are not wrong there I put a mower on Gumtree last week serviced, good running condition,oil changed, new blades,air filter etc for $40 and I get an email asking if I was negotiable on price. I had probably spent 2/3 hours on it getting it sorted. I just replied that this is one of the ones I build over winter and I didn't care if he didn't want it because come the first 2 weeks of spring everything I have built will be sold. Problem is it seems to take me nearly a week to build a mower these days, Victa wheels kill me trying to find a reasonable set and with other things happening a mower seems to sit on the bench for a week before I get it finished. Admittedly at this time of the year my days out there are not too long probably a max of 5 hours, 4.30/5.00pm is about it

Norm, that is plain un Australian whatever that means these days. $40 is barely cost recovery for a mower that is practically as good as a new $600 Victa Power torque. You are better off returning containers like here in NSW where I'm making some handy pocket money, despite occasionally temperamental reverse vending machines and some, lets say, interesting characters who turn up there.

MF at least with any $40 mower I sell I don't give a warranty on it

That's the standard response from any Dumbtree buyer nowadays, you just gotta have thicker skin and tell those opportunistic punters to nick off, or post the words "Price is Firm" on your listing and this eliminates these sort of people. Honest buyers will see the value in an item and only contact you if they are happy to accept the price.

Lol or just charge higher and let the baby have his dummy and hope he views the discount amount of $40 as the bargain that it is.

There's definitely 2 schools of thought regarding the marketing of a second hand item and I think we've just covered both of them above.

Had a laugh today when he contacted me and said he would pay the $40 but I had to tell him it had already gone LOL. $40 running mowers don't last too long.

Our tip asks $25 for any old mower, regardless of the condition. They had to standardize their prices to stop arguments and haggling.

I always get far more than $25 value out of the parts. Maybe I've just been lucky, but every single mower I have brought home goes with just a small amount of tinkering. I am lucky that I live in an area populated by mechanical morons. The things some people do to their mowers is often beyond belief. Then they throw them to the tip and go off to Bunnings to buy another one. I could write a book on it. Maintenance and repairs are clearly foreign words to many people around here. The way people today see it, why bother maintaining anything when Bunnings is just around the corner? Just use it and abuse it until it runs out of oil and grinds to a halt. Throw it away and buy a new one. I'm amazed at how many tip mowers simply have very dirty spark plugs. Clean the plug and away they go. Or in the case of Rover mowers, the little sensor on the coil has been completely blocked off with grass and muck until it no longer works.

All of my restored mowers are either semi-retired or retired. Like retired racehorses, I give them a run every now and then, but they no longer have to cut grass. They spend their days in the comfort of the shed with a blanket thrown over them. They get only the best fuel and oil and TLC. Some smoke a bit, others don't. They all have their little idiosyncrasies. Some start first pull, others need three pulls on choke, they all sound different when they run, a couple leak a few drops of oil each week, others are not so incontinent. I sometimes think I am running a mower retirement/nursing home. LOL!

I tried to sell a welder on Gumtree last year. I soon got sick of all the stupid offers of $2 and $5. I ended up parting with it for $20, which was a bargain to say the least. Then I listed a near new Rover mower in great condition for $120. First week I get a PM from someone offering me $2 for it. Not sure if they are just trolling, dreaming, or crazy? I sometimes wonder if these are the same people who bid things up to insanely inflated prices on ebay at times? Like when I saw a mower wheel bid up to $450 one time, that was really not that rare, I had to scratch my head in wonder. Well I have wondered about myself on occasions whenever I have paid far too much for something, or sold something for a tenth of its real value. Auctions tend to bring out the craziness in people. We see it all the time. People bid over a million dollars on old houses that are literally falling down, but they could have gone to a real estate agent and bought a much better home for half that price. Gumtree seems to be the polar opposite of an auction site. It is more like a haggling site in my opinion. Buyers are only looking for a bargain. A mate of mine calls it "poor man's ebay".

This is the exact reason I have moved away from doing any business on "DumbTree" and exclusively use Ebay - No more bullish*t from drop-kicks with time and and a keyboard.......

I won't use ebay, they burnt me once with their charges and I have on numerous occasions told them to stop annoying me (in the most of polite terms) because I would never sell another thing using their site.After a while they stopped sending me reminders that "buyers were waiting for me to list stuff" Since then I only use Dumb Tree buy I quickly flick the idiots and always get the prices I list them at. Everything I list is in good working condition and I offer money back if they are not satisfied. I have given the money back to a couple of people who should never be allowed to use this sort of equipment and I have realized this after they have left and got a call ten minutes later saying that they can't start it or something.

G'day all.
An interesting topic on public ignorance about anything mechanical.
I guess a basic mistake occurred here.

vint_mow, not sure what you mean by 'side pulls'?
The Briggs side-pull recoil starters appeared in the early 1960s.
The vertical pull recoil starters appeared in the 1970s.

Good story.
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Jack