Dead Mower Walking

A year ago, I purchased a refurbished Black and Decker electric mower from an Amazon store.  March 6.  It came a couple weeks later. I was so thrilled to have a way to cut my lawn.  No more rolling neighbor eyes when they glared at my lawn, I gloated to myself.  And it was green as green could be.  And quiet!  And easy!  I just plugged it in to an extension cord and pulled a lever and off it went.  No yanking on cords or trying to get a stinky loud gas mower ungunked to run.  I could mow my front lawn in five minutes.  I could mow the cat yard in about the same.  Grass doesn't grow much back there.  The ground is like concrete, only made of clay.  Nothing grows much in cement soil.

I mowed the front yard a few days ago.  No issues!  Made me happy!

So today I go out to mow the cat yard, which is so lacking in grass, it is a quick mow.

Not today.  I get the mower out there, plug it in, it runs for three minutes maybe and there's some clicking weird noise in the motor compartment.  The mower quits.  Dead.  I am stunned.  I can't believe my reliable little easy machine isn't running@!

WTF!  I want to kick it but I don't.

I check the outlet with a lamp.  It works.  I check the extension cord.  It's good.

Darn it!

I go online and read up on electric engine repair. I find out the engines are simple--composed of three parts--the DC magnet/coil motor, a rectifier, to switch the current from AC to DC and the switch.  I check the switch, after unscrewing screws whose heads have somehow been stripped.  Did I mention this is a refurbished mower?  They don't replace stripped screw heads?  Or did the refurbishment crew strip them?

The switch supposedly causes the most issues, due to corrosion or pulling on the wires.  Switch was fine.  I check the rectifier.  Looks good to me but what do I know about rectifiers and whether they are working or not working.

Then my eye is caught by something, although I don't know what the hell it is, but it's something missing, that's easy to see.

Oh boy now I'm mad.  That's the magnet ring and a piece off it is missing, torn out.  I have an arrow pointing to it in the first photo.  In the second photo, you can see what the outer ring looks like, on the left of the first gray metal motor housing bar, that runs down from the top.  You can see the ripped out section just to the right of the first gray vertical metal housing bar.  You can see the end of one brush sticking out just to the left of that second gray bar.

A replacement magnet ring costs $75!!!  OMG!!! NO!!!

I got violated by Amazon and a refurbished mower.   I have sent an e-mail to the Amazon store I bought it from.  It's the weekend, they won't answer til tomorrow.  In the meantime, I wrote a nice little review for Amazon.

Read it here!

I bought a mower, used it a dozen times, and it's history, a pile of shit.

What will I do now?  Guess I need a goat.

I'm mad!!!  Yes I am.  My time is valuable.  Who says it isn't.  I spent hours trying to fix a machine that should not need fixed.  I want to bill somebody $50 an hour labor for working on it.  Black and Decker!!!  I'll send it to them first.  On their site they say "Buy refurbished tools.  They're so wonderful and it's the ultimate in recycling and so green!"

Let's see how green my grass is, once I spray it down with grass killer.  I'm doing that too, because I don't have the money to lay out for another piece of plastic shit that breaks after a dozen uses.  I'm going to write in my grass with grass killer "Black and Decker Reburbished Shit Machine"!   I want that seen from the heavens!  I'll have to write small or use part of the neighbors lawn.