I'm Out There With Scissors Now

The part of my lawnmower that broke is actually pretty impressive


Awe geeze, Jeremy. Why you gotta go breaking stuff all the time?


I didn't do it...I think.


Alright...so what happened this time?


Well, not long ago, I decided it was time to mow the lawn again. Stupid lawn keeps growing. Anyway, just as I get going, I see a piece of metal shoot out from under the deck and spin to the ground smoking. Fortunately for me, it came out the front, since it was a pretty substantial piece and would have pretty easily embedded itself in my leg had it come out the back. Anyway, I shut off the mower, thinking that this might be a somewhat important piece. A cursory glance under the deck revealed nothing, but since I'm an engineer, I needed to find out the problem.

I ended up removing the blade of the mower and found that the metal piece that connects the blade to the motor's drive shaft had broken completely in half. Mind you, this is not some little flimsy little component. This thing is at least 1/4" of solid aluminum (aluminium for the British among our readership) as evidenced by THIS PICTURE HERE. Without this piece, which is customarily called a doohickey, but I guess the technical term is "Blade Adapter," the blade is simply on a bolt at the end of the shaft and will only spin if it darn well feels like it. Since a spinning blade is one of the hallmarks of a properly-working lawnmower, my mower is currently out of commission.

As it turns out, despite being a pretty beefy component, it's not entirely out of the ordinary to break this piece. Most people junk theirs by hitting a rock or a tree stump or something that causes the blade to come to a near-instant halt. Therein lies my problem...I didn't do that. I had just started the mower maybe 15 seconds before the piece of this thing came out, and haven't hit anything other than grass (more specifically, weeds, but that's entirely beside the point) with the blade in quite some time. So when it comes to figuring out why this happened, I'm at a total loss.

At least I'm not at a total loss when it comes to repairing my mower (We can go ahead and preemptively add "Lawnmower Repair" to my list of Skillz) since I can easily order this piece from the company's website. Ostensibly, they're sold at the local "High's Home Improvement Store" also, but the jury is out if they carry the correct size. Either way, by the time I need to mow the lawn again, I should be back in mowing form...until the next thing breaks.