I got my lawnmower hung up trying to mow the swamp which is supposed to be my yard..
I helped my neighbor across the road with a similar problem last week. His John Deere zero turn got stick in the mud in the ditch that runs along our road. He had a buddy drop by with a supposed 4WD pickup truck. Buddy backed his truck down the incline towards the mower. Buddy's truck tranny was apparently FUBAR, since only the 2 rear wheels were spinning. His tires chewed through the grass & down into the muddy ground beneath.
I let them work for a while, then went across the road & offered a couple tow straps & the use of one of our Subarus. Never used the Subies, since he had another buddy already on the way with an old Geo Tracker (4WD). Finally used the Geo tracker & my tow straps to pull the pickup truck out of the way. Once that was done, it was an easy thing to pull the mower out of the mud. 4WD is a good thing!
As to what I did today, I picked up a used, broken, generator from Craigslist recently for $50. We've had our baby generator here at home for 9 years. It came in very handy back ~2008 during the 10 day long hurricane Ike-related power outage.
I've wanted to get a backup to our backup generator ever since (sort of a "1 is none, 2 is 1" thinking), but didn't want to spend $$$ for another generator. So when I saw a 3500/4000 watt portable generator listed saying basically that the generator engine starts right up & runs fine, but it didn't produce electricity, I decided to grab it for $50. If nothing else, it would give me a replacement engine/carb/whatever for our existing generator. Almost all the small generators now are made in China and sold under a variety of labels. Their parts are interchangeable.
So I picked it up about 10 days ago, then spent some time trying to figure out what was broken on it. In looking online at diagnosing generator problems, I eventually figured out that the AVR (automatic voltage regulator) component had gone bad. I ordered one from eBay (out of China) for about $17, including shipping. It arrived yesterday, and I installed it this morning.
Success!
