Weed Eater 22" High Wheel Gas-Powered Lawn Mower

When I saw the bad reviews on this mower I could not believe my eyes! I bought this mower when I bought my first house. We have used it twice a week every summer for 10 years! We have never even changed the oil on this thing! Replaced spark plug once. Replaced the blades twice(my fault, tree root first time, aluminum fence post second time). The little flappy thing on the side is horrible, we keep ours lifted with a bungee cord. The safety cable finally rotted away last summer(we now disconnect spark plug to shut off). This mower has been stored outdoors, year round, for the entirety of it's life! To my amazement it starts up every single summer first shot with no effort! This is the exact mower, same size, same briggs and stratton engine as they still sell now at walmart. I paid $150 back then(not sure how much they are now, doesn't say online), but as you can tell I'd by another in a heartbeat....I just don't ever see our current one dieing. Hopefully I didn't just jinx myself! LOL

only reason not given 5 stars is the weak design of the discharge chute. has not failed to start in almost 3 yrs even after winter storage. delivers a smooth, even cut. does the job for a basic, no-frill lawn mower.

I have had two WeedEater lawn mowers that I have bought from Walmart. They have both had the 500 series 158cc 5.00ft.lbs. Briggs and Stratton engine. Both of these lawn mowers in a very short period of time have started to run really lousy. The RPMs pulsate up and down while you are cutting the grass to the point where you think it is going to stall on the down RPM. This last lawn mower did stop running and would not start. I changed the plug, which was black with soot but the gap OK, and it started OK. The lawn mower had started using more gas for the same lawn. It would run out while I was mowing. When it was just about to run out the RPMs would go up and it would run fine (like it was getting more air and less gas). It seemed to me the lawn mower has been running to rich. A friend mentioned the diaphragm under the carburetor had gone bad. He said it was pulsating because it was getting air and then gas. Another friend mentioned the gas cap. He said it should have vent holes. I took the cap off, which has three vent holes. Inside I fine a cork gasket, round and taking up the whole inside of the cap. It had four vent holes which did not line up with the holes in the cap. It didn't make any difference if the holes lined up as the cork was loose in the cap and would just spin and misalign anyway. The cork had been sucked outward and it seems like it is sealing off the holes in the cap. I looked at my brother in laws exact lawn mower which he brings to a lawn mower shop to have serviced and there is no cork inside his cap. I don't know if he took it out or it did not come in the mower or the shop took it out at service time. Has anyone else had this trouble?

I have one that I have left out in the rain, the snow etc. I have it serviced once a year (before mowing season), and it starts, like clockwork, on the first pull. And no, I'm not some burly man. I am a 45 year old woman. I had bought mine previous to moving into my current house, to which my landlord left a really nice Honda mower to use. That Honda mower sits in the shed collecting dust because it doesn't cut as well as this bad boy, and it's so inexpensive!! You would never know it from the quality of cut, and the reliability of the machine.

Overall, I would rank it as a, "Don't Buy." Frankly, if it starts, it works, but starting it poses the problem inherent in this machine. The hardest portion of mowing the lawn with this contraption is starting it. Only after thirty minutes to an hour of pulling and priming will it start, and even sometimes then, it won't start. By the end of one summer, it ceased to start entirely. After it started, it worked well, never stalling, but expect only a couple uses. Overall, I would rank it as a, "Don't Buy."