Mainly due to my own laziness and not finding enough time to take it somewhere to be serviced, but my usually reliable Honda lawnmower had developed a habit of cutting out periodically. 30 seconds to 1 minute seemed to be the period that it had settled on, but always happy to restart after a tug on the starter cord.
The lawn here is very small and the balance between the inconvenience of the mower cutting out, getting the lawn cut and the time out to (a) find somewhere to get it serviced and (b) to then deliver and collect the mower were all in reasonable balance.
Having looked after and fiddled with cars since I was 17, (I like to think) I’m quite adept at figuring out the problem and fixing it myself.
This issue, however, had me stumped.
From time to time, I would strip down the carburettor and fuel system; clean out the fuel tank; adjust the throttle cables; clean the plug and fiddle with the wires.
Everything seemed clean and tidy and in good working order.
But, the problem persisted.
Last weekend was the first cut of Spring and the mower seemed to have settled on every 10 to 15 seconds as a reasonable running period, which was little too far out of balance even for me.
Google to the rescue.
I searched for ‘Honda HRB runs then stops’ and the first link had the answer – JustAnswer. Right near the bottom of the thread, the comment;
I decided that the fault must be electrical so I started by changing the Spark plug and that has cured the problem.
A second check on an alternative Google hit on DoItYourself confirmed the solution. Well enough for a trip out to Halfords.
Mower ran perfectly once I’d changed the plug.
