Garden Tractors for the Small Country Place

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The Environment

Lawn and garden equipment has not been easy on the environment. Two-cycle engines used in most chain saws and other hand-held outdoor-power equipment burn an oil/fuel mix, and are notoriously smoky. Their high-revving engines develop most power if barely muffled, and many produce an ear-splitting high-frequency howl as well. The lower-revving four-cycle engines used in lawn tractors are cleaner burning and can be better muffled, but are still fuel-inefficient and a source of significant noise and air pollution-especially if worn or poorly tuned.

Worse perhaps, homeowners have traditionally drained small engines' one to three quarts of used crank case oil and antifreeze coolant out onto the soil. As we now know, a single quart of oil can contaminate several acre-feet of the water table over the years it takes soil bacteria to break it down. And, no matter how long they have to work at it, no microbe can consume the heavy metal combustion by-products that qualify used engine oil as toxic waste. Collect used oil and antifreeze and take it to a recycling center.

We've all become environmentalists in the past quarter-century (the good folks in Milwaukee in particular, by the way-the by-product of that city's municipal waste composting program having been sold as the bagged fertilizer Milorganite for over 30 years). Today, both small-engine and lawn and garden implement makers are cooperating with government to reduce environmental damage. All engines are designed to burn unleaded gasoline, propane, or diesel fuel. But newest models use computer-designed clean-burning, fuel-efficient combustion chambers, and larger engines scavenge crank-case fumes and clean exhaust gasses much the same as cars And, low-tone mufflers with multiple resonating chambers that reduce noise output are becoming standard equipment on outdoor power equipment and should come available as replacements for rackety designs.

MAINTENANCE CHECKLIST

...In the Spring

Uncover and fill tires with proper amount of air.

Pull the plugs, install and connect the battery or pull the starter rope to crank the engine over several times (turn quick and easy without compression) to clear the cylinders, and prelubricate drained-dry bearings and cylinder walls. Crank till the sound coming from the sparkplug holes changes perceptibly ...and becomes tighter-sounding. Then, dry and replace plugs.

Add fresh, clean fuel if you've drained it all, open the fuel gate, bounce on the seat and activate all pedals and hand controls vigorously to free up any stuck interlocks/cutoffs, and turn it over. The tractor should fire up clean and raring to go.

Before you start the engine for the first time in the spring, open up the air cleaner, and remove and check the filter. In '72 I think it was, I learned the hard way that a field mouse had gnawed its way into the air cleaner of my fine old Gravely 7.5 and spent the winter snugly insulated by the surrounding paper element.

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