Summer is here. The babes are proudly displaying their assets by wearing skimpy or revealing attire. You're out mowing your lawn, fixing up the yard and some cutie walks by diverting your attention from the task at hand. But it's the weekend, it's hot, and the old eyes deserve a break, right? Sho nuff! When you get done wiping the drool from the edge of your mouth, think about giving your power equipment a break as well.

All but large power equipment is air cooled. Working in the yard, grass, dust, dirt and other debris gets sucked in by the cooling fan and blown through the cooling fins. After a season or 2 the cooling fins can be coated or impacted with this debris and prevent cool air to circulate next to the cooling fins. Think of it as when you install an insulation blanket to your water heater. But your engine doesn't like it one little bit.

This saw has it's fins completely obstructed. The ignition coil is nearly completely covered. The only question is what will stop this engine first. A heat seized piston or a cooked ignition coil.

This is a 4 HP Briggs. As you can see, it's cooling fins are pretty much covered up by grass and debris as well. What further complicates this is that many older engines use an air flow governor system. When air flow is blocked, the governor sensor blade senses no flow as meaning slow rpm and increases the engine speed. Result, over revving an engine that is already hot.

Advise? Once a year, remove the engine shroud and soak down everything with an engine degreaser. Let it set a few minutes and then use a high pressure nozzle to hose it off. Before wetting anything, place a piece of plastic wrap under the fuel cap and remove the air filter and stuff the cavity with a clean rag. All engines built in the past 15 years have sealed electronic ignition so there's not much to worry about them. Kill switch's may need to be dried off, a air blow gun or hair dryer works well for this. Re-assemble and start the engine up, let it idle for 10 minutes and allow it's own heat to completely dry itself off to prevent rust or corrosion.

You'll have a much happier engine that will last a lot longer.

LMRM; Bob :<=