keeps me searching
Something about old Briggs engines that makes them make very specific sounds. My lawnmower has an 18 hp single about 40 years old that makes it’s own symphony of noises.
The mower deck has a drive belt to the middle spindle and two to the outer spindles. They make their own whine as they run around the idlers. The engine is throttled and governed, and it has an old Nelson can muffler on it that doesn’t so much quiet the noise as it does tune it. it makes a whoo-whoof sound as it runs, which becomes amplified as the governor kicks in and cracks the throttle open. The size of the flywheel on it keeps it going pretty well, to say nothing of the weight of all the rest of the mass it is flinging around, so driving it back and forth across the lawn it goes whooof whooof whooof whooof whooof whooof whooof whooof whooof
SO for the last thirty five or so years I’ve been mowing the lawn humming my favorite neal Young song, “Heart of Gold’
I’ve been doing it automatically for all this time, and I never even realized it myself until today. The ogwife saw me going to start the mower and said “Gonna sing “heart of gold for an hour?” Apparently she noticed before I did.
Wonder what other damned pavlovian behavior I have jammed in my noggin.
Sometimes… the most entertaining person to watch is our own self!
Do you slobber and wag your tail when you start the mower too? :->
I have an old garden tractor too. Don’t recall humming any Neil Young but it does have a distinctive sound. It quit a week ago, troubleshooting finds no compression and everything up top working, so something jumped a cog inside that old Tecumseh. I have a newer rider but it lacks the soul of my old tank.
So if Heart of Gold starts playing on the radio, do you get an irresistible urge to mow the lawn?
If I find I’m approaching a stale green signal light at an intersection (ossifer, that laht wuz green!) I catch myself singing a little ditty tot he tune of ‘Waltzing Matilda’:
driving for Jesus
driving for Jesus
making all the lights
when you’re driving for Him.
So far, I haven’t been t-boned. Seems to be working as designed.