[fingpilot]

Two things I just thought of.

When I moved to Minnesota from LaLaLand, I, of course, took my fairly nice lawn equiptment with me. Went from a medium tract house up in a canyon (20 minutes to mow year round) above Burbank to two acres of 'Rambler' on a lakefront (Minnetonka).

They do not mow the lawn in MN. More like harvest it. My 24" deck mower from CA was a joke when you are looking at 2 acres of grass that grows an inch a day in the summer. Edger? People back there kept asking what that was..... "A trencher for wires or fibreoptic???"

Off to Sears, bought a rider, like 40", 10 Horse, with a catcher that was the size of a dumpster. Summer days, was just shy of 2 hours. Compost pile in August was 20x20, and 8 feet tall. It would 'steam' all winter, and fresh snow was there for less than a day.

Twice a week to keep it looking 'sharp'. Spring and fall was once a week, and once it got cold (35F) at night (early October, and until late April), once every two weeks. Halloween till end of the mud months was snowblower season.

Ok, back on topic. The lawn was sloped, fairly steeply at the top. The first couple of times with the deck mower, on the slope, it would 'sag' RPM, and I thought it was a gas delivery problem. Then I noticed how hot it was. Oil was midrange on dipstick. Filled it to top of range, and problem went away. The slope had been starving the splash lubrication because of the deck angle.

Perhaps that was what happened.....

Sometime later this winter we'll talk about snowblowers and frozen tennis balls.