I went to a job today to change the oil in one mower and figure out the problem with a second.  The first was just an easy oil change, the second mower fired up, then died and wouldn't start again, so I took it with me to troubleshoot in my shop.  I figured that the carburetor had been sitting with gas in it and needed to be cleaned.  I took it apart and found not only was the carb pretty gummed up, but the bowl bolt was clogged and the intake gasket was broken.  I ordered the gaskets, cleaned all the parts, and am just waiting for the parts to get here to finish the job.

Finished Rebuilding the 5.0hp Craftsman Chipper/Shredder.  The engine was in good shape, other than the carburetor missing some parts(the guy that donated it to me robbed Peter to pay Paul).  I'm in the process now of ordering a new carb bowl and bolt and some new gaskets.  The chipper/grinder portion was pretty rusted, and some of the blades were seized up.  I spent quite a while getting all these parts cleaned and restored to I will keep you all updated on the progress.  Here are a few pictures of everything I've done so far.

Just finished the Murray 20" Lawn Mower with the 3.5hp Tecumseh Engine.  Runs great, super quiet, not really powerful with a 3.5hp motor, but great for a small yard.  Super easy pull start, everything went back together flawlessly.  Had a little trouble with the carburetor, some of the old seat was still left and had to clean it out.  So I snapped a few pictures and posted it on Craigslist.org for $80, which isn't a bad price for a practically brand new mower.  Here's a few pictures of everything dismantled.

I went ahead and ordered the parts for the 20" Murray lawnmower with the 3.5hp Tecumseh engine on it.  I figured that I didn't need to replace the rings which brought the repair price back down quite a bit.  I received the parts this weekend and hope to have it rebuilt soon.  I will keep you all updated.

Did some painting work on a house earlier this week.  The owner of the house had an old wood/brush chipper in the back.  It has a 5hp motor on it, and everything seems to be in relatively good working order.  Only draw back is the carburetor bulb is missing, which in a lot of cases means buying a new carb, because they don't sell the bulb individually.  This one is a craftsman though, so I'm hoping I can find the stuff I need on Parts Direct.  I had my jaw broken two days ago, so I am on the recovery side of this process and things are slow, but hopefully I will get better and things will pick back up.

I looked into the parts for the murray 20" lawn mower engine and realized it wasn't going to be cost effective to replace all the parts that needed replacing.  I hate to abandon a project like this, because most of the parts are still good on it, but what can a small business guy do.  Hopefully I will find another job soon to keep busy with.

My father-in-law has a crack in his Suburban.  Taking it out and repairing the crack is so much easier than removing the radiator from the VW Beetle.  The downside to the repair is the location.  The crack runs perpendicular to the support ridges along the end cap.  This makes a patch job a little more tricky trying to ensure an even seal across each ridge.  Because of the location it may need a new end cap, or new radiator.  A new end cap runs about $120 where as an entirely new radiator is around $180....Hard to do a fix for 2/3 the cost of a new one, especially considering how old the radiator is now.  Budget constraints will determine if we go with a new one, or just an end cap.
Here are a few pictures of the radiator removed, the patch and it all put back together

The last lawn mower I rebuilt I ended up trading for this lawn mower plus $50.  It was pretty much shot, wouldn't run, leaking oil out the muffler, carburator shot, etc.  I have the engine dismantled now.  I'm looking for parts, but finding it a little disconcerting to spend $50 dollars on a lawn mower that I was originally planning to sell for $40 before I found some additional problems.

So my friend's wife has an older beetle with well over 100K miles on it, and it's starting to show.  A couple months ago we replaced the spark plugs.  Shortly after that they bottomed out going into a parking lot and broke a chunk out of the radiator.  He finally bought the new radiator and we put it in today.  Replacing a radiator isn't that hard, getting to it on a VW Beetle is a pain in the neck.  But we got it done, and the car runs without any problems that it didn't start with. 

This was putting the final screws securing the fan housing to the radiator.  This was the easy part.  Putting the front bumper on, all 70 or so screws, was the hard part.

This was the old radiator we pulled out.  You can easily see the chunk missing out of the side of it.

I started this website to provide an avenue for business.  I love working on cars, but working out of my garage makes it difficult to store a vehicle for very long.  I can do vehicle maintenance, almost any minor repair, some major repairs.  The reason I love small engine repair is that it's usually pretty cheap, doesn't take up much room, and generally easy to troubleshoot..  I hope to get some more business that I can use as material for more posts.  Please, if you know someone that needs some mechanic work done, let them know about me.