Well, winter had come and gone and Efiwym, my wife, wanted me to rototill her garden. For those who read my blog, DIY Project, Used Rototiller, we purchased a used rototiller at a rummage sale last year for $15. I was fortunate to get this 2-cycle machine to run after investing $25 in parts. Unfortunately, as I was almost finished rototilling the garden, the machine died and I could not get it restarted. At that moment I believed that it would never run again, at least until next year.
Fast forward to spring and here I am again not looking forward to this 2-cycle nemesis.
Efiwym suggested that I buy premixed gas for it. She is such a smart lady. So, we went to the place to save big money and purchased a bottle of 50-1 premixed fuel (besides other stuff).
I did not have time to work on the rototiller, so I saved this project for another weekend.
The following weekend I had the time, so I pulled the rototiller out of the corner of the garage to start working on getting it going. I was not optimistic. I checked the spark plug and it looked clean and not fouled up. I added the fuel and it was ready to start.
However, I forgot how to start it. I got out the manual I downloaded online and read the starting instructions. The drawing in the instructions was labeled choke, pre-choke and run. The label on the rototiller read: A, B & C. Common sense will tell you the sequence should be A for choke, B for pre-choke and C for run. So that is how I started. I hit the prime button 6 times and I could see the gas flowing through the lines. That’s a good sign. I put the switch on A and pulled the crank at least 6 times. Not one indication it was attempting to start. I looked over to the start-stop switch and it was on stop. Okay, let’s try this again. No luck. The manual just read to restart over again to get it to run. Start over again? I did not get past step A! But I did start over again several times and nothing. I gave up.
I checked the plug to see if there was a spark and I could not see one. Aha! That’s it! The plug is bad. I would go back to the 11% rebate store and buy a new spark plug…tomorrow. My arm was tired.
The following weekend I planned on working on the rototiller with my new spark plug. However, being the positive guy that I am, I also went shopping online for a new rototiller.
Efiwym, my wife, asked if I checked the cost to rent one. Even at $40, she thought it was too expensive. So, renting one was out of the question.
I started to be a fan of battery-operated equipment. No gas, no oil, no air filter, no carburetor and no hassle. Just plug it in and push a button to start it every time. So, I perused the Internet for cordless rototillers. They were not cheap for the little amount of time I would need one. They had cheap “cultivators,” but I did not think they would do the job. So, I settled on corded ones. I found a corded rototiller online at the place where doers get more done. I showed it to Efiwym while justifying a corded rototiller would work. There is an outlet right near her garden.
The shopping was put on hold until I got the new spark plug in the rototiller. I took the old plug and checked it again to see if it had a spark. I closed the garage door, and I found a dark space to check for a spark. With the plug attached to the wire and touching the engine block, I pull the crank rope. There it was: a spark. I decided to reinstall the plug and tried the starting process again. NOTHING! I installed the new plug. NOTHING! I put the rototiller back into its time-out corner and ordered the rototiller online.
The new rototiller will be delivered in time for me to till Efiwym’s garden next weekend. The old rototiller would be moved from its time-out corner and delivered to the city’s recycling center a.k.a “the dump.”