How to repair an Atco Qualcast Trojan 18s lawn mower

Front wheel height adjustment slips.

I found this happened more often when trying to mow near bushes, etc. Presumably this is one reason for later versions of the mower having covers over the levers.

N.B. You should realise that, if the cord were to break, fall in front of the mower and thus be hit by the blade, that this would be dangerous. Therefore you should regularly check the cord.

Other work on the front wheels.

This photo shows the wheel and adjuster removed from the body.

Note that the two sides are interchangeable - only needing the adjuster aligned to the other side.

Rear wheel height adjustment slips.

If the holes themselves have worn away, see just below here for a fix.

Rear wheel height adjustment failed.

What I did was to cut up a piece of angled aluminium to fit over the holes.

This I fastened in place with two M8 round-headed bolts.

Then I moved the lever back and forth so as to scrape a mark on the aluminium.

Then, with the lever moved out of the way, I drilled a new series of holes in approximately the same place as the old. You will need to size these until the pin on the lever just engages each hole.

Please note:

If the bolt heads get in the way of the lever then it will not engage properly.

The same is true if the angled piece is too deep.

The lever end will stick out further once this modification is made and may catch on the surroundings when you mow.

Tube to carburettor loose or cracked.

I first found that the pipe, leading to the rear of this tube, had become misaligned. A relatively gentle push corrected this.

I then found that the tube had split which was corrected with a bit of copper wire taken from an old electrical cable.

Starter flywheel cover loose.

The holes in the base had become worn.

I simply removed base and cover, drilled out the rivets, rotated the cover to the next set of holes and re-fastend it using a new set of pop-rivets.

If you don't have a pop-rivet gun, then use suitable bolts, washers and locking nuts (ensuring they don't foul the mechanism it covers.

Exhaust cover broken.

Mine had broken off at a mounting point.

My solution was to drill a hole in the remainder, bolt on an extension piece and then use the original bolt to fasten that to the engine.

Repairing the engine mounts.

You can see that, not unsurprisingly, the engine mount nut is rather the worse for wear.

You don't need to go quite this far to repair the engine mounts but it's worth sorting out any other problems at the same time.

You should at least wear safety glasses if doing this.

They will need to:

fit well over either side of any developing crack in the mower body,

curved so as to avoid the rim of the engine hole in the mower body,

be shaped so as to not impede the flow of grass within the mower.

not be so large that the belt cover cannot be refitted.

Please note that this shows them held in place with M8 bolts going up and that I changed this when I realised that, if they ever worked loose, the bolts would fall down onto the blade and cause bad things to happen. I thus refitted them the other way up (see below), using lock nuts and suitable washers.

You will need to loosen the carburettor, which is simple, to allow the bolt to be inserted and tightened.

Note that a washer, as large as possible, is needed to prevent the aluminium piece from being distorted when tightening the nut.

Note that I had to cut grooves in the cover to fit over the new pieces.