Lessons in Applied Mechanics

Last weekend I headed outside to mow the lawn. For those of you not living in Southern California, this is one of the tradeoffs of good weather - you "get" to mow year-round. I pulled vigorously on the mower's starter cord and it broke off at the base.

The mower is six or seven years old so it didn't surprise me too much that it had finally broken. I chuckled a bit at my reaction - I almost fell over backwards when the cord came flying at me - and got some tools to see what I could do to reattach it.

It's okay to do some disassembly on your mower if you like but don't get carried away. You know how the cord (generally) gets pulled back in after you yank on it, as if a spring were involved? It turns out there is a spring involved - if your mower is like mine, it's a coiled strip of metal under a fair amount of tension.

And how do I know that? Let's just say that although the sound "Spro-oi-o-oi-o-oi-oing" may occur fairly regularly in cartoons I don't hear it much in real life.

I was finally able to get the spring back into it's base but there was no way to resecure it to the top of the starter. This particular lesson in applied mechanics cost me about an hour of my Sunday afternoon and 25 bucks for the replacement assembly at the Sears Parts and Service center.

It could have been a lot worse.