Types of Lawn Mower Starters

Video Transcript

"Ok, here we are back, I'm going to talk about starters. Different types of starters. Briggs and Stratton came out with what I think is probably the best starter and of course they don't use it anymore. But you'll see that there's a big hole in here and it fits on top of what they call a starter clutch. This has ball bearings inside and its ratcheted so when you pull the starter, this turns the flywheel, then when the engine starts, it just spins free. Another type of starter is the pawl engages the cup starter. You pull this and the little pawls come out engage a cup on the flywheel and turn the flywheel crankshaft fast enough to start the engine and then of course when they go back in, they're not impacting. Another way is for a friction spring to hold a piece of plastic and its on a gear that forces it into the flywheel back and is out of the way. Into the flywheel and back and out of the way. And another way is where the pawls are on the flywheel themselves in a cup and that would look like this, the cup, and the starter itself would have little ridges and when you pull this, it engages the cup, the pulley and the pulley starts when the engine turns fast enough then the pawl is spring loaded and retracts by centrifugal force taking it out of the mix. And that's another very popular starter. And that's about all the types of starters, there's some other ones, but they're all basically the same."