Since there's a lawnmower thread going already, I'd like to add my lawnmower question to it. If you don't care about my long background story, scroll down to find the actual question.
Background: I'm a complete idiot when it comes to lawnmowers, as I have use a reel mower for most of the time I've lived in his house (my lawn is about 10% larger than a postage stamp). Before this place, we lived in apartments. (As a kid, I was trusted to use the mower, but never to maintain it).
So, I have this 3rd hand mower I know next to nothing about. I was told it needed a new spark plug, but it would start if you used starter fluid with it. It worked fine for a season (with starter fluid), then I bought a reel mower (see above) when it ran out of gas. Now we are about to move, before selling this house, and I'd like to get the old mower going again, to minimize the time and effort required to maintain the old place, since I'm going to have to care for two houses at once (and I don't have a Pickup, so I don't want to be hauling a mower back and forth). I replaced the sparkplug a few days ago, but I haven't put any gas in it yet, because I need to know:
The actual question: How do I tell if I need to mix oil with the gas, and how much to use if I do? Also, can I just use stanard (or synthetic) motor oil for a car, or do I need to buy special lawn-mower oil? I have a couple of individual quarts of miscellaneous oil leftover from buying cases, so I figured if wouldn't cause serious problems, I'd just use that. (Not that I'll need two quarts for a couple gallons of gas, right?).
Also, do lawnmowers have oil that isn't mixed in to the gas? How often do you need to change that?
Here's the only other piece of info I have about the mower: It's a Murray.
P.S. Feel free to laugh at me for being completely ignorant of this stuff...
Hybrid Mode
