It lives to destroy again

Now I don't want to alarm you or the rest of the world....but last week I managed to resurrect a dead mower.

Please keep this to yourself as the last thing I need is hordes of people on my doorstep, begging for me to lay my hands on their mowers...

It all started when my current mower stopped. Or actually fired up, worked for ten seconds and then stopped. It's been doing this for a while you see and combined with it's inability of cutting anything softer than tissue paper before retiring for a spell, mowing the lawn has been a pretty arduous adventure.
(A quick tip for anyone having a look at buying a Talon Surefire on the second hand market - don't. This thing avoids hard work more than a repeat parole offender and gives up on anything it can't slice through easily...which is most grass.)

Thinking there was a clogged up filter somewhere I pulled it apart and removed as much in-bedded crud as possible (enough to build another mower pretty much) but no, it was like asking a high schooler to ignore their friends and finish their homework on New Years Eve - it just didn't want a bar of it. Start, point it at grass, watch it give up in a record time.

What my lawn looks after after a couple of hours work with the Talon

So I turned to the project that's been occupying a space at the back fence for quite some time - fixing the mower that the boss gave away months ago. Like my Talon Crapcutter, this Icon mower would start but couldn't hold idle and so it has been left at the back for quite some time. But now here was a chance for mower redemption and a chance for yours truly to at least partially fix one broken thing in a day.

First to be fixed was the spark plug that looked to have spent most of it's lift firmly jammed in the ass of a carbon demon and ended up covered in more crap than a sewerage worker with inner ear trouble. There's supposed to be a gap for the spark to get it's groove on but the was no room for even a hint of light so out came the file and sharp pointy things to get the plug to look more like a plug and less like...er...a mess.

Having no idea how old the half tank of fuel was, I drained it and was quite surprised by its interesting green tinge. This liquid had probably stopped resembling fuel about the time Bill Clinton was discovering interns. The float bowl of the carby was next where the stale fuel had obviously given up on being green and chose to turn black instead - that's a first!

So with fresh fuel in I said a little prayer, pulled the cord and instantly became chuffed that nothing had exploded and that it had started and remained started. In fact it happily chugged away while I did a little jig of success, waiting for instructions.
I first I cranked the throttle but the revs remained the same. So I decreased the throttle and it slowly died. So I fired it up again and left it alone - even one speed was better than none at this stage.

It turns out, my Icon Lawn Destroyer only needs one speed...and it'll happy chew through the following with a moments hesitation:

-Grass
-Weeds
-Roses
-Small rocks
-Boulders
-Other mowers
-Car bodies
-Diamonds

Seriously not a single thing fazed my little chugging beast, not even the patch of grass on the mound out the front  that makes most other mowers throw in the towel, 'Mowercide hill' it's name.
When the false pretender Talon mower was on it's lowest setting, it would fall in a screaming heap after moving an inch. On the same setting the Icon would give the Dwarves in the mines of Mordor a buzz cut in it's garden mulching stride.

I've gone from a work experience student to a complete multi-million dollar team of professionals in the mower world....and I did this with my own two hands (oh and some sockets and fresh fuel..)

Now to resist the temptation to go around and smite all the evil of this world...I've got some mowing to catch up on!