Start your engines...if you can

When we bought our house we inherited a riding lawn mower with it from the previous homeowners. We're very thankful for this little mower because...even though it looks crazy...it has worked really well. Until recently.
Thankfully, my parents were here for a couple days and my dad took a look at it. He fixed it! Who knew that lawnmowers needed service like cars? (ha - hopefully you can sense a bit of sarcasm here)

We never wanted to invest in fixing our current mower because we planned on getting a newer one. But since we had to fix everything else on the house...the mower priority has moved further down the list. (and is now at the bottom of said list since I can think of about a hundred other things I'd like to spend a few thousand dollars on other than a lawnmower)

Here are the parts that were causing a problem in our mower...along with the new part. Can you see a difference? Hmmmm...I guess we need to add 'maintain lawnmower' to our list of things to remember! :)

Below - this round part is supposed to have a thick piece of rubber all the way around it. Guess it wore off a lllllllllooooooonnnnnnnnggggggg time ago because the metal was even all cut up under where the rubber ring was supposed to be. Oops!

But this is the worst one. See how the new part on the right is a complete circle? Ours was cut the whole length through! Yikes!

 Thanks Dad! Our mower works once again!