Yesterday morning the lawnmower wouldn’t start. As we were staring at the mower looking for where the spark plug might be, Donna said, “Maybe it is under here?” She proceeded to back out a thumbscrew on the side which opened up a 2″ x 4″ panel. No spark plug, but there was a paper air filter. Wow, this thing has a paper filter. I removed it, fanned the folds to loosen the dirt and smacked on the driveway a couple times to clean it. It wasn’t too dirty which was not too bad considering we bought the mower a little over two years ago. As I went to put it back in I noticed a foam filter that resided under it. It was no wonder the paper filter was so clean, the foam filter was totally blocked and there was a 1/32″ thick layer of dirt covering it.
Figuring I found the problem, I washed the foam real good and placed it all back together, but it still wouldn’t start. Because the yard really didn’t look to bad I wheeled the mower back into the shed. Now almost absolutely sure it was the spark plug I went inside to check the owner’s manual for location and type of plug. Well, as is the custom now a days, the manual was a a generic one covering all 68,000 models of Yard Machine mower, so none of the pictures actually matched our mower and there were plenty of paragraphs talking about the spark plug and how to replace it, but there was no actual mention of the proper number to use. In the same bag as the mower manual was one for the Brigs and Stratton engine. It too was extremely vague, but I did find mention of a spark plug number near the back of the book, 5062. That number was for the resistor plug to reduce electric interference. Under that were two other numbers, 802592 & 492167. Now we are in business.
Or so I thought. This morning we checked an auto parts store and the Home Depot where we had bought the mower, where we found all kinds of plugs and all kinds of cross reference guides, but they all were sorted by manufacturer, plug manufacturer (NGK, Champion, etc.) not engine maker, and nowhere were the three numbers I had mentioned. My only resort now was to find the elusive plug, remove it and hope it was marked with something that I could cross-reference. So I came home and removed the plastic engine cover and the plug location was immediately identifiable. Not only that, I was easily seen and removed without having to remove the 4 screws and cover. I, in typical male fashion, didn’t see it, because it wasn’t where I first looked.
The plug removed was all back and icky and still smelled of all the gas it was drenched in yesterday in my failed fifteen or so pulls to start the mower. I wiped the dirt off the ceramic insulator and read, “TORCH F6RTC.” After a little Google searching yielded substitutes of RN9YC (Champion) and BPR6ES (NGK.) Tomorrow after work we try Home Depot again and hopefully come home with a spiffy new plug that will lead to a running lawn mower.