Mowing the lawn today, my mower engine started to blow oil out the side
not sure exactly where from. It spewed onto the hot muffler and made
a lot of white smoke. I shut it down and tried to figure out what was
up. There was oil in the air filter and I added a bit more oil to make
up for what was lost and started it up again and it seemed to be fine
again. What was up with that?

Mark

blown head gasket? just a hunch.
"Mark" wrote in message
oups.com...
Mowing the lawn today, my mower engine started to blow oil out the side
not sure exactly where from. It spewed onto the hot muffler and made
a lot of white smoke. I shut it down and tried to figure out what was
up. There was oil in the air filter and I added a bit more oil to make
up for what was lost and started it up again and it seemed to be fine
again. What was up with that?

Mark

"Mark" wrote in message
oups.com...
Mowing the lawn today, my mower engine started to blow oil out the side
not sure exactly where from. It spewed onto the hot muffler and made
a lot of white smoke. I shut it down and tried to figure out what was
up. There was oil in the air filter and I added a bit more oil to make
up for what was lost and started it up again and it seemed to be fine
again. What was up with that?

Mark


Did you tip the mower over to remove/sharpen the blade recently? Always try
to tip the mower so the carb is up. You might also want to clean/replace
the air filter if it was saturated with oil.

Les

As already mentioned, tipping the mower the wrong direction to
access the deck area is a common problem.

Another possible cause is overfilling the mower crankcase with oil.

I got a free mower when somebody did this. A neighbor abandoned
a mower which smoked horribly through the muffler and even spit out
oil as you attempted to start it. One half hour spent cleaning the air
filter, cleaning the spark plug and draining the excess oil gave me a
perfectly fine mower for free.

She (the previous owner) had added as much oil as the engine and
fill tube would hold. If a little oil is good, then a lot must be better?

Good luck,
Gideon

================

Mark wrote in message
.com...
Mowing the lawn today, my mower engine started to blow oil out the side
not sure exactly where from. It spewed onto the hot muffler and made
a lot of white smoke. I shut it down and tried to figure out what was
up. There was oil in the air filter and I added a bit more oil to make
up for what was lost and started it up again and it seemed to be fine
again. What was up with that?

Mark

"when the car is low, I add a quart"

I think that's the mentality.

Well, when your baby is hungry do you buy him a Quarter Pounder and a large
fry and cram them into his mouth until he's finished them all?

--

Christopher A. Young
Learn more about Jesus
www.lds.org
www.mormons.com


"Gideon" wrote in message
. ..
As already mentioned, tipping the mower the wrong direction to
access the deck area is a common problem.

Another possible cause is overfilling the mower crankcase with oil.

I got a free mower when somebody did this. A neighbor abandoned
a mower which smoked horribly through the muffler and even spit out
oil as you attempted to start it. One half hour spent cleaning the air
filter, cleaning the spark plug and draining the excess oil gave me a
perfectly fine mower for free.

She (the previous owner) had added as much oil as the engine and
fill tube would hold. If a little oil is good, then a lot must be better?

Good luck,
Gideon

================

Mark wrote in message
.com...
Mowing the lawn today, my mower engine started to blow oil out the side
not sure exactly where from. It spewed onto the hot muffler and made
a lot of white smoke. I shut it down and tried to figure out what was
up. There was oil in the air filter and I added a bit more oil to make
up for what was lost and started it up again and it seemed to be fine
again. What was up with that?

Mark

yeah, I'll get a chance to tear it apart this weekend.

no I didn't tip it recently, it's been running fine till this...

the sticky piston ring causes it to burn oil and smoke or causes it to
regergetate oil?

mine was squirting oil out the side from under the shroud which I will
remove the weekend to investigate further. the oil was leaking onto
the muffler causing smoke, the oil was not being burned in the cylinder

thanks
Mark

One of the many reasons why I still use my old lawnboy.....

True.

I enjoy the oil-fuel mix used in Lawnboys for a variety of reasons.
Besides not having to worry about oil leaks, you don't have to
worry about whether other family members are checking oil
level before operating the mower. And, of course, you get more
horsepower per cubic inch of engine with a 2-cycle design.

But, you can still have some "oil leak" situations. One common
problem is a leaking seal on the driveshaft. Oil-gas mixture gets
blown out onto the mower deck. The gas evaporates quickly, but
the oil remains on the deck. This doesn't impact performance
unless it is getting blown onto the drive belt of a self-propelled
mower. A continual fine mist of oil being applied to the drive belt
creates a very slippery and useless belt.

FYI, I've had Lawnboys for a while and I believe that in the past
few years they addressed one of my biggest complaints, which
was locating the exhaust under the mower deck. That made a
much quieter mower, but the heat under the deck was bad for the
grass and it often killed or weakened a circle of grass everytime
the mower was stopped in one spot on the lawn. Plus the mufflers
were not as robust and reliable as other designs and involved a lot
more labor and expense to replace. Current Lawnboy models now
have traditional mufflers.

Gideon


wrote in message
.com...
One of the many reasons why I still use my old lawnboy.....

I took the engine shroud off this weekend.

The oil was not coming out from the head gasket (good) nor from any
other part of the engine itself. (good)

The oil was coming out of the air cleaner box, part of that box has a
tube to the crankcase and also an opening to the fan blower. This part
of the air cleaner box is a separate compartment from the intake air
filter. I guess the idea is the fan provides a positive pressure for
crankcase ventilation. Apparently there was an accumulation of oil in
this part of the air cleaner box and when I made a sharp turn, some of
it spilled out onto the muffler. I'm not sure why there was a large
accumulation of oil there but I cleaned it all out and all seems to be
well now.

I should have mentioned earlier, this is a Tecumseh engine on a Sears
riding mower.

thanks
Mark

Is this an OHV engine ? I had a similar problem with a B&S intake engine
that drove me nuts last year with oil in the Crab until I realized that the
normal mode of head gasket failure on an ohv is to blow through to the
cavity where the pushrods are thus pressurizing the crankcase.
One telltale sign is that the smoking gets dramatically worst when you load
the engine and more gas takes the easier crankcase route out
BO

"Mark" wrote in message
ups.com...
I took the engine shroud off this weekend.

The oil was not coming out from the head gasket (good) nor from any
other part of the engine itself. (good)

The oil was coming out of the air cleaner box, part of that box has a
tube to the crankcase and also an opening to the fan blower. This part
of the air cleaner box is a separate compartment from the intake air
filter. I guess the idea is the fan provides a positive pressure for
crankcase ventilation. Apparently there was an accumulation of oil in
this part of the air cleaner box and when I made a sharp turn, some of
it spilled out onto the muffler. I'm not sure why there was a large
accumulation of oil there but I cleaned it all out and all seems to be
well now.

I should have mentioned earlier, this is a Tecumseh engine on a Sears
riding mower.

thanks
Mark