Equipment and Engines By Nigel Miller
By Bruce Carmichael In-house Engine Maintenance
Keep your equipment out of the service shop with some preventative-maintenance protocol
Service technician Nigel Miller tunes up a Briggs & Stratton Commercial Power Vanguard engine at A-1 Outdoor Power, Corcoran, Minn.
A
majority of the commercial landscape equipment brought to a dealer service shop for engine repair doesn’t need to be there in the first place. Many en- gine issues that are sent to a service technician like me
could be fixed by the commercial landscapers themselves or, more typically, prevented from initially occurring by following some basic preventative-maintenance protocol. Whether it’s a blower, pull saw, string trimmer, backpack
blower or a larger piece of equipment such as a zero-turn mower, keeping equipment out of the shop and on the lawn can save your company quite a bit — sometimes hundreds of dollars per visit. In fact, an hour’s worth of labor without the cost of replacement parts can average $100 at some service shops. Simply bringing in a handheld piece of equipment to our shop, A-1 Outdoor Power,
14 Landscape and Irrigation July/August 2011
for inspection will cost $34.50 when the fix itself could have been done by the contractor for a couple of bucks. And in an economy slow to turn around, you already know every dollar counts. The following are a few of the more common engine service
requests I see throughout the lawn care season and how to prevent them.
Keeping equipment out of the shop and on the lawn can save your company quite a bit.
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