redsturgeon wrote:I was brought up trying to kickstart 1950s single cylinder 250cc motor bikes with manual choke Amal carb and Lucas coils, give me electronic fuel injection any day!
Amen to that. But tell the young'uns that you spent your formative years getting your tickle button wet and they'll back away rather fast.
But sadly, my Briggs & Stratton mower doesn't leave me much room for the old skills - not now that they've taken away the throttle control. All that's left is the decision as to how many pushes of the carb priming button to apply. (The instructions say three, but ours will start instantly on six, and not one less.)
No, it was my all-American Ryobi two stroke petrol strimmer (1990s) that really allowed me to demonstrate the good old skills. It had electronic ignition, but for some reason that didn't work unless you'd yanked the cord twenty times, dried out the plug, and then retired to treat the blisters on your hands. Then all you had to do was give it another twenty pulls, followed by more groaning, and then a few tried and tested OCD remedies such as singing the Star Spangled Banner backwards while standing on one leg.
Dry out the plug again, and then utter a few solid English Basil Fawlty curses for luck, and the infernal machine would start. Unless it didn't. In which case it was getting too late to do the bloody gardening anyway.
They tell me that all Ryobi's garden machines are made in China these days. They also tell me that they start.
BJ