Quick Start Guide – Riding Lawn Mowers

Many consumers use riding lawn mowers for much more than just cutting the lawn. They use them for transportation across their property, they pull small trailers and they add attachments for a variety of jobs around their property. It is important to always have them start easily and that means keeping up on the maintenance of these machines. One of the most important things is clean oil along with fresh gasoline and clean fuel systems. If you do not keep up with these basic maintenance items, chances are you are going to have much more serious and expensive maintenance activities to be concerned about. You may even have to purchase a new riding lawn mower. We put together a few tips to help consumers stay on top of the basic maintenance for riding lawn mowers. You can apply these tips to regular lawn mowers and many other small engines that you may use.

Maintenance Tips for Riding Lawn Mowers

• Change the oil on a regular schedule to ensure that your engine is easy to start
• Change the oil after every 50 hours of operation or at the end of the season. Oil degrades over time and is only optimum for about 6 months.
• Use fuel stabilizer in your gasoline. Especially if it sits in your gas tank or gas container for any length of time
• When not using the riding lawn mower, start it once a month.
• Ensure that the spark plug wire has a good connection to the spark plug
• Always use the proper fuel as specified by the manufacturer
• Starting the riding lawn mower keeps  stabilized fuel in the fuel system.
• Change the spark plug every two years or at the very least clean it every year.
• Check air filter and clean it every season unless you are in very dusty conditions. Then check and clean it every month.

Following these basic steps will go a long way to making it much easier to start your riding lawn mower easily every time.