Changing the Oil in a Lawn Mower

Series Summary

In these instructional videos, you will learn the basics of lawnmower maintenance. There are two kinds of mowers in current use – reel and rotary mowers. The first of the two kinds cuts grass in a scissor-like action, using one stationary blade and one spinning blade. The rotary mower however uses only spinning blades and cuts the grass at a very high speed. This is the most common type of mower and it uses an internal combustion engine to power the mechanism.

Are you having trouble balancing the cutting deck of your small engine lawnmower? Our expert will teach you how to do this and many other things including careful removal of the engine’s cutting blade. You will also see how to sharpen the blade and reinstall it safely and efficiently. Watch as our lawnmower maintenance expert removes and reinstalls a carburetor on a small engine lawnmower. Learn how cleaning the carburetor can improve the working mechanism of your lawnmower and see first hand how to change the oil and spark plugs. If you need to torque the head bolts on your mower, our expert can show you how to do this step by step. Learn from an expert how to improve the working order of your mower by using fuel stabilizers. Lawnmower maintenance never looked so easy!

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Peter Gutwein and today we’re going to look at a lot of different things about basic maintenance on a mower. One of the first things that we’re going to talk about is an oil change. Oil is crucial for the motor without good clean oil and more you could ruin it in half life or even in a day if you don’t have minimal oil in there. I’ve seen brand new mowers that are trashed in less than half an hour because they forgot to put oil in it. So we’re going to start off with just removing the oil cap here and setting it to the side. Now we’re just going to turn the mower on its side, believe it or not that’s one of the easiest ways to change the oil. You don’t have to mess around with the plug on the bottom side that usually comes out if you try to take it out and then it’ll wiggle out later. So this is the recommended fashion of actually changing the oil on this style mower. So here we go, you can use just a top for a plastic container for catching the oil, something like, don’t use your wife’s new Tupperware just use something that you can buy real cheap at the store, an old pan or something like that. We’re going to just let the oil drain out there for a few minutes there. Okay now that we’ve let the oil drain out of this thing we’re going to go ahead and set it back up and then we can go ahead and add fresh oil to it. I use a good 30 weight oil, the brand doesn’t really matter and you just pour it in the same hole that it came out, right on the top of this mower. That’s perfect and so that’s how you change your oil in a basic lawnmower."