I've mentioned before that I stop and pick up discarded / abandoned / unwanted things that people set out by the road. A couple of days ago, I ran across this item:
It looks like a lawnmower but it isn't. It's a Craftsman 247.770100 lawn vacuum. Basically, it's an gasoline powered outdoor vacuum cleaner. I doesn't just vacuum up leaves and other material on the ground, it also chips / shreds them. There is a built-in small branch chipping chute on the right side. The bag on the back is huge, and billows way out to hold a lot in operation. The bag is made of some kind of very heavy felt material.
Most of us have an assortment of loose acquaintances that pop up in our lives occasionally. Not exactly friends, but people we know from one connection or other. One such person I kinda /sorta know had this thing sitting in front of his house. He has a regular table of free stuff he sets out and this machine was sitting with that stuff. I stopped and we talked a while and I decided to take this thing. He'd never run it; someone else had given it to him as a project. It had been sitting outside his place under a pine tree; it still had a healthy layer of pine litter on top of it when I first saw it.
When I got it home, I checked the engine oil, it was off the stick so I installed some. Then I checked the fuel tank, which was dry, so I added some. I removed the spark plug and shot of few squirts of engine oil into the combustion chamber to restore compression. I removed the dirty air filter and shot a bit of engine quick start into the carb. It didn't want to fire. I had the bag off. Then I noticed that there is a safety cut-out switch that grounds the coil when the bag is off. So I put a wire in place to hold the switch down, then after a few pulls the engine started up in a cloud of smoke. Which cleared right up after a minute or so.
Today was the trial run. Autumn is a very good time to have a machine such as this. First, I took it for a spin on my paved driveway, which I normally just blow off. But this thing picks it all up. It's adjustable as to height, and it worked like a charm. Then I raised the adjustment a couple of notches and took it off road to vacuum up some maple leaves, where it also did a fine job.
I'm not sure what vintage this machine is, but I think it's about 25 years old. It's got a Tecumseh 4.5 HP engine which now starts cold on the first pull. With the throttle lever in the correct position, it will start hot on the first pull. Oh, and that Tecumseh engine is pretty thirsty. My only complaint about this machine is that the fuel tank should be about twice as large.
It looks like a lawnmower but it isn't. It's a Craftsman 247.770100 lawn vacuum. Basically, it's an gasoline powered outdoor vacuum cleaner. I doesn't just vacuum up leaves and other material on the ground, it also chips / shreds them. There is a built-in small branch chipping chute on the right side. The bag on the back is huge, and billows way out to hold a lot in operation. The bag is made of some kind of very heavy felt material.
Most of us have an assortment of loose acquaintances that pop up in our lives occasionally. Not exactly friends, but people we know from one connection or other. One such person I kinda /sorta know had this thing sitting in front of his house. He has a regular table of free stuff he sets out and this machine was sitting with that stuff. I stopped and we talked a while and I decided to take this thing. He'd never run it; someone else had given it to him as a project. It had been sitting outside his place under a pine tree; it still had a healthy layer of pine litter on top of it when I first saw it.
When I got it home, I checked the engine oil, it was off the stick so I installed some. Then I checked the fuel tank, which was dry, so I added some. I removed the spark plug and shot of few squirts of engine oil into the combustion chamber to restore compression. I removed the dirty air filter and shot a bit of engine quick start into the carb. It didn't want to fire. I had the bag off. Then I noticed that there is a safety cut-out switch that grounds the coil when the bag is off. So I put a wire in place to hold the switch down, then after a few pulls the engine started up in a cloud of smoke. Which cleared right up after a minute or so.
Today was the trial run. Autumn is a very good time to have a machine such as this. First, I took it for a spin on my paved driveway, which I normally just blow off. But this thing picks it all up. It's adjustable as to height, and it worked like a charm. Then I raised the adjustment a couple of notches and took it off road to vacuum up some maple leaves, where it also did a fine job.
I'm not sure what vintage this machine is, but I think it's about 25 years old. It's got a Tecumseh 4.5 HP engine which now starts cold on the first pull. With the throttle lever in the correct position, it will start hot on the first pull. Oh, and that Tecumseh engine is pretty thirsty. My only complaint about this machine is that the fuel tank should be about twice as large.
