Tell Grace to tell her dad to buy you a new one, Richard.

 

Go get two.... one that looks like the one above, for the next time your FIL decides to help with the lawn, and for the other, go build yourself a second garage, go down and get a pimpin John Deere with 24" spinners on it.... and if your wife complains, remind her that it was her father that couldn't tell the diff between gas and oil.... amazing that she was ever born if he's had a history of putting stuff in the wrong hole....

 

It was $120 and it's your father in law. Just get another one.

 

The wife disagreed that her dad should pay for a new one, so that avenue is CLOSED.

manual mower is out of the question...my yard is not big enough for a riding mower but big enough where i don't want to do this manually...

going to try and see if i can take the mower apart next weekend. The spark plugs are fouled, so i'm going to get another one. maybe i'll just get a honda.

 

you have more than one spark plug in a lawn mower? a new plug is about $1.00.

throw some gas in the right spot, some oil in the right spot and it will probably fire right up.

Maybe put a "CAT DIESEL POWER" hat on before you attempt all of this....

 

Sears sells Craftsman mowers with Honda engines. I have one and it works great, plus it's a lot cheaper than a Honda Harmony.

 

If you are even slightly mechanically inclined you can take parts off the engine, clean and dry them and put it back together and it should run just fine unless there were some gaskets or o-rings that the gas ruined but they should be built to hold up to that.

But I did the same thing you did and went with the $120 model from home depot. It is in year 5 and after having it not run a few times and getting it running after removing and cleaning the carb, I am tired of it. It is starting to sputter again. I just hope it holds up until the end of October when mowing season ends. Then I will do the previously mentioned Craftsman with a Honda engine. You can get one for less than $300. Especially when they do fall closeout if you can get yours to run for a couple more months.

 

Get a new one...

Off the original topic but some of you seem to know mowers etc pretty well, so I have a question. My Ryobi weed wacker decided it wont start anymore. The spark plug was real nasty so I put in a brand new sprak plug filled the gas tank with appropriate oil/fuel mixture and pulled the mofo till my arm about fell off. The only thing I can think of is the engine is flooded, the manual says to hold trigger and pull the cord repeatedly. Did this for as long as I could handle, its barely a year old and about $100.