Another couple of weeks have passed, and – while I’m still not and never will be a fan of AT&T – this has been one of those periods causing me to really miss that paycheck.
We have had rain every day for about the last 10, although “rain” probably isn’t the best word to describe the amount of water that’s been dropped two or three times daily. Downpour. Deluge. Monsoon. Frog strangler. It had gotten bad enough by a week ago that I finally decided that I needed to get one of my two gasoline-powered lawn mowers running again. My battery-powered mower does a fantastic job on the lawns if they’re dry and if the grass isn’t too tall. If both of those conditions aren’t met, I’m lucky to get 30 minutes out of the battery. I managed to stay ahead of the curve in the front lawn over the wetness, but with the grass growing like crazy and the rain every day, the back of the house has turned into a veritable jungle. It’s time to fire up the Briggs & Stratton.
In the past, I would’ve just take the mower(s) up to Corley Small Engine in Duluth and gotten a fix for $50-$70, but I decided to save some money and learn a bit about my mowers. Purchased a carburetor rebuild kit online for $13, brought the newer mower into the garage, and – with the help of a few videos – took the old carb off one night after work while the storm raged outside. Noticed as I was doing this that some water was leaking through the top of my (internal) garage door.
Great.
Finished disassembling the carb, threw away all of the old gaskets, dropped the parts into a carb wash bucket, and went to bed. This was on Monday, I believe. By Tuesday morning, I could barely open the garage door. The frame had swollen or warped. Also saw water damage at the corner of the ceiling above the door and in the drywall around it. Still raining.
Tuesday after work, I climbed up on the garage roof (oh, joy), cleaned out all of the gutters (disgusting) and a pile of leaves and other crap in the corner of the roof above the garage door where it was most likely that the leak was. Didn’t see any obvious place for the leak, but didn’t spend a lot of time looking, as another storm was on the way.
Received my carb rebuild kit and was ready to put everything back together on Wednesday. Unfortunately, the kit didn’t contain a float gasket. Just, you know, the most important gasket in the whole friggin’ thing. So I put everything back together without the gasket and set it aside. The garage door remained very sticky, but the leaking seemed to have stopped.
Went to Corey’s yesterday, got the float gasket that I needed – and also picked up the same rebuild kit (for $13) from them so I could fix the other mower at some point. As expected, it contained ALL of the gaskets I needed. Somebody screwed up the online order.
Got home, put the carb back together, put it back into the mower, hooked up the fuel line, and released the grip that had been crimping the fuel. Gasoline immediately started pouring out the bottom of the carburetor.
Fantastic.
I re-crimped the fuel line, took the carb back off, checked all the gaskets. One of them, on the nut on the bottom of the carb, looked suspect, so I took that gasket out of the new kit that I’d purchased and replaced it again. Put everything back together, released the fuel line clamp….gasoline leaking out of the carb.
Crimp back in place. I’ll take the mower to Corey next week. The bigger problem now is that gasoline was spilled on the mower, and the mower was in the garage…so my garage smells like gasoline. Got up this morning with a plan to move the mower back to the shed in the backyard. Pulled on the doorknob to open the garage door.
Doorknob broke off in my hand, leaving, as you might expect, a hole in the door. Gasoline vapors found it very quickly. Now my entire downstairs smells like gas.
After some trial and error, I managed to get the garage door open without a knob, completely took out all of the knob, covered the hole with some painter’s tape. Off to Home Depot this morning for a new knob. Also spoke to a contractor friend of mine about fixing the drywall and the door frame in the next couple of weeks. Also bought some spray sealant which I’ll put on the garage roof today – more ladder climbing, more time on the roof, more joy.
It has become apparent that, insurance or not, I’m going to have to replace my roof. Yes, I can afford it by raiding my savings. I just really didn’t want to do that. At this time last year, I could absorb the expense and be back on top within a month or two. These days, I’ll probably end up financing it and locking myself into the stupid job for another three years.
Maybe the gasoline smell will be gone by then.