76F and mostly sunny @ 08:30. They're talking about a chance of a late day isolated thunderstorm. WeatherBug show 0% chance of precip until 14:00 on Wednesday ... so I should be able to get the rest of the front cut and picked up today ... although it likely won't be much fun (high of 88F predicted for today)
Had a bit of excitement yesterday. Was mowing with the Simplicity up along the fence line and I flushed out a turkey.
After I got that done I came back down to the wood lot and was cutting the tall grass down there and all of a sudden the Simplicity started to miss and stutter. Was kind of odd because I knew it had fuel. I started heading over towards the shop and got about halfway there and it quit. I heard something and noticed a funny smell and I looked down and to the left by the drive tire ... and the mower was ON FIRE !
I ran the 75 or so feet up to the shed, unlocked the door, grabbed the fire extinguisher and ran back to the mower and put it out.
Turns out what had happened was that a stick had gotten wedged up under the chassis and had somehow pushed the fuel line and positive battery cable up in the chain drive for the wheel. It rubbed through the insulation on the battery cable, creating a short and mebbe the fuel line too ... which was dripping gas to feed the fire.
This area was under and just forward of the fuel tank (plastic) ... which had about 4 gallons of gas in it. When I saw it initially I about crapped my drawers.
Ran back up to the shop and and grabbed a spring clamp and a pan to catch the fuel and then flagged down The Woman who was mowing on the Kubota and had her bring it over so I could run down and grab a couple of chains so we could tow it back down to the house.
After that little bit of drama we decided to call it a day for outside activities ... other than grilling some hamburgers for dinner.
Fortunately nothing was badly damaged and it should be a pretty easy fix - replace the battery cable, cut off the burnt section of fuel line, and mebbe the fuel filter.
Hope everyone has productive and enjoyable day ... with no unwanted drama ...
