Flymo L300 Petrol Hover Mower

What do you want from a petrol lawn mower? Something that starts, doesn't give you any hassle and cuts the grass. Well the L400 I got has been a disaster. It does, eventually, cut the grass but getting it going is a nightmare. The very first time took an age - which is fair enough. But every time since has been a three act drama - and now it's given up the ghost inside 6 months. The idea is quite simple - prime the carb by squeezing a teat that sucks the petrol/oil mixture through. Then yank the handle and, cough, splutter, cough the thing should start up with with that scream you might remember from your first motorbike. ...

For years, I had been ploughing (not literally) up and down my garden, which is long and thin with an electric hover mower of some make of other – it doesn’t matter which, I seem to get through them quite rapidly. I had my routine for doing it in two halves, moving my carefully orchestrated pair of power-cable drums over at halftime. Then I got the “Ground Force” bug, building in a deck (with water feature of course!). Of itself, this caused no problem since it had actually shortened the effective length of the mowable garden – I refuse to call it a lawn. What did create more problems than it solved, was the construction of raised ...