Lawn Issues

I thought about mowing my lawn today. Beforehand I thought, "I wonder what will go wrong this year." Because something always does. Part is a curse from the lawn gods and part is I don't understand anything that runs on its own power. At the end of mowing season I empty the gas and the oil. I was told that, or read it, or maybe its just a gut feeling I have that it should be done. Maybe I should stop doing that. That way maybe I wouldn't have these issues at the start of the new mowing season.

Usually its just hard to start and after repeated tries (close to a million), it finally does. More than once I've just given up and bought a new lawn mower. I always get the bottom of the line mower (maybe part of my problem) so it really isn't all that expensive.

One year I put in too much oil, I'm pretty sure. I didn't think so at the time, but I started it and all this black smoke started coming out. I thought, "That'll go away." Nope. It looked like the Hindenburg going down. Looking back on it I must have put not too much, but way too much oil in. That might have been one of the times I just bought a new mower.

So this year I went to Home Depot to get oil. A person asked if I need help. So I said I was looking for lawnmower oil. She was very helpful. Unfortunately there seemed to be more than one kind. I wasn't going to ask anymore questions, because I just assume the Home Depot employees are all chuckling about me anyway. I'm not going to give them any ammunition. There were two different oils there. They might both be the same and just a different company. Two-cycle / four-cycle - I don't know if that makes a difference. I thought, "Let's just roll the dice and go with this one." I didn't even read the label. If the lawn gods are with me, I'll be fine. And if they aren't, it won't matter anyway.

I get home and find that my lawnmower no longer has the cap with the built in dip-stick. My guess is I took it off when I drained it a few months ago and forgot about it. I probably came across it weeks later, and not knowing what it was, threw it away.

So now what? I thought about shoving a cork or something in there. Duct tape it down somehow. But then even if that worked, I won't have the dip stick to measure the oil. So that would probably mean a repeat of the Hindenburg disaster.

I thought I could look up a parts list on-line. The name of the lawnmower is, I swear, a Murray. What kind of name is that for a lawnmower? The engine, which for some reason is different, is a Briggs and Stratton. Now we're talkin. But on-line you need to put in the engine serial code which they said is located beneath the muffler. I have no idea what a muffler looks like, but the only place I see numbers, its got 13 of them. The website will only allow you to enter 10. I even tried Googling, "What if you can't find your dipstick?" Nothing. I'm perplexed right now. I'll come up with something, even if its my back up plan of buying a new lawnmower.