Starting a Lawn Mower with a Weak Right Arm

My right rotator cuff is partially torn. For the first 6 months of the injury, starting my 17 year old craftsman lawn mower was painful and pushing it not much better since it was not self-propelled. After another 6 months the pain was largely gone, but my arm is much weaker and I have to baby it to keep from inflaming the rotator cuff.

Once my arm stopped hurting, the craftsman mower wasn’t too bad to start because I could manually prime the cylinder with the priming bulb and start it almost always on the first pull. But having to manually push it and restart it every time I had to stop and pick something up was clearly not a great idea.

So I decided to purchase an expen$ive honda lawn mower that is self-propelled and has a blade clutch. Once it is running I never have to restart it. Once it is running…

The decision to forgo the electric start, at least for this mower, was a big mistake. This mower is very difficult for me to start. In cold conditions I have to pull it 7 or more times, by which time my shoulder is quite sore and I haven’t even started cutting grass.

I took the mower back and complained about the starting issue which they could not replicate. They blamed it on the gasoline which is ridiculous, IMO, because the gas was brand new non-Ethanol. Since then I’ve went thru several cans of fresh gasoline with no change in symptom.

Over time I realized their diagnoses issue was they would store the mower indoors and do a test start the next morning fully cold, but their shop is much warmer than my detached garage and I’m sure the 30-something mechanic has a much stronger arm.

As the summer progressed, the engine did get easier to start and as fall approached it got harder to start again.

Honda is supposed to be the Cadillac of lawn mowers. Well, OK, maybe Cadillac is no longer a gold standard. I have a Honda auto, generator, and pressure washer, and they all work very well. My other Honda small motors all have manual chokes.

This Honda lawn mower has an automatic choke that is controlled by a thermowax choke actuator:

As the engine heats up the pin extends which will cause the choke to open.

Many people have griped about the automatic choke working poorly due to the thermowax. I have a relative who does small engine repair, and he told me first thing I should do is replace that part. On ebay, it was quite inexpensive, so part purchased!

I took off the carb and pulled the old thermowax. Comparing the old to the new, the pin on the old thermowax was not retracted as far, so it seemed like that was the likely culprit. Sadly that really didn’t help much, if at all. I replaced the spark as well, but also no real difference. This is a new mower, so I wasn’t expecting it to help, but I wanted to rule it out. That really just leaves the carburetor.

(as of Apr 2024, I finally solved the problem which was due to the thermowax actuator not seating properly. See here).

This spring my plan was to replace the carb. But as I stewed on this expen$ive pile of metal, it occurred to me the main problem is my weak pull. A new carb probably isn’t going to matter outside of the choke and that has already been addressed.

So I pondered how I could increase my pull strength, short of surgery (which they say is not yet an option anyway).

There is a guy who built a device to automatically pull starter cords. Very cool device, but nearly 1/3 the cost of the mower. This would be a last resort for me:

https://pullstarters.com/

I started thinking about  the physical aspect of starting the mower. When I start a mower, I hold the push handle with my left hand, then pull the cord with my right using a quick snapping motion retracting my bicep and shoulder. What if I twist my torso at the same time?

I started doing that motion, and while the mower still needs 3 pulls to get started in fairly warm weather (75 degrees), I am not pulling as hard on my shoulder and it isn’t hurting nearly as much.

My process is:

• Throttle to Max
• Lightly pull starter cord until I feel the cylinder start to compress air
• Bring the starter cord back into the housing to the point my arm is fully extended and my torso is twisted toward the mower.
• Simultaneously pull cord with my bicep and twist torso in the other direction trying not to pull shoulder back

In researching to find if anyone else suggests twisting the torso to start a mower (I find nothing), I did find an exercise called the lawnmower pull. Hmmm, maybe I’ve been starting mowers wrong my entire life?

This demonstration shows quite well the motion I use:

I really wish Honda would not have put on an automatic choke or at least include a priming bulb like my craftsman had. It was 17 years old and still started on the first pull every time!

By the way, DO NOT let the motor shut off until it is fully warmed. This is a big disadvantage to the thermowax system – it will heat up enough to disable the choke, but the engine still isn’t warm enough to restart without a choke and you will find you can’t start the mower until you have to let it cool down far enough to re-engage the choke.